http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (PhysOrg.com) -- The most accurate timekeepers in the world are atomic clocks, which tell time based on the absorption of a very specific and unchanging microwave frequency, which induces electrons in an atom to `jump` from one particular energy level to another. But to improve atomic clocks further, a new basis is needed. http://www.physorg.com/news159624756.html Physics Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:13:10 EST news159624756 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany, Cornell University, USA, and the University of Cologne, Germany, have detected two of the most complex molecules yet discovered in interstellar space: ethyl formate and n-propyl cyanide. http://www.physorg.com/news159548933.html Space & Earth Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:20:56 EST news159548933 A clock that is so precise that it loses only a second every 300 million years - this is the result of new research in ultra cold atoms. The international collaboration is comprised of researchers from the University of Colorado, USA and the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen and the results have just been published in the prestigious scientific journal, Science. http://www.physorg.com/news159111429.html Physics Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:37:36 EST news159111429 The club moss Lycopodium serratum is a creeping, flowerless plant used in homeopathic medicine to treat a wide variety of ailments. It contains a potent brew of alkaloids that have attracted considerable scientific and medical interest. However, the plant makes many of these compounds in extremely low amounts, hindering efforts to test their therapeutic value. http://www.physorg.com/news159037185.html Chemistry Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:01:03 EST news159037185 Ohio State University researchers have developed a new strategy to overcome one of the major obstacles to a grand challenge in physics. http://www.physorg.com/news158516549.html Physics Thu, 09 Apr 2009 17:23:07 EST news158516549 A collaboration between researchers at the University of Surrey`s Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) and the School of Physics at Trinity College Dublin have discovered that you can produce a composite of carbon nanotubes embedded in a polymer that gives outstanding performance as an electron emitter material. Under high voltage these electrons strike a phosphor screen producing the familiar colours of red, green and blue and opens up the possibility of highly efficient large area field emission displays as well as possible uses as low power back lighting units in LCD televisions. http://www.physorg.com/news158489259.html Nanotechnology Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:48:14 EST news158489259 By combining the results of a number of powerful techniques for studying material structure at the nanoscale, a team of researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, working with colleagues in other federal labs and abroad, believe they have settled a long-standing debate over the source of the unique electronic properties of a material with potentially great importance for wireless communications. http://www.physorg.com/news158417087.html Physics Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:45:24 EST news158417087 Scientists from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, led by Rudolf Grimm offer new insights into the extremely complex few-body problem. For the first time, the quantum physicists provide evidence of universal four-body states that are closely connected to Efimov states, in an ultracold sample of cesium atoms. The scientists have just published their findings in the journal Physical Review Letters. http://www.physorg.com/news158310375.html Physics Tue, 07 Apr 2009 08:06:42 EST news158310375 (PhysOrg.com) -- GOCE's sophisticated electric ion propulsion system has been switched on and confirmed to be operating normally, marking another crucial milestone in the satellite's post-launch commissioning phase. http://www.physorg.com/news158237939.html Space & Earth Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:59:38 EST news158237939 The design of efficient systems for splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, driven by sunlight is among the most important challenges facing science today, underpinning the long term potential of hydrogen as a clean, sustainable fuel. But man-made systems that exist today are very inefficient and often require additional use of sacrificial chemical agents. In this context, it is important to establish new mechanisms by which water splitting can take place. http://www.physorg.com/news158233827.html Chemistry Mon, 06 Apr 2009 10:51:51 EST news158233827 (PhysOrg.com) -- Semiconductor nanowires -- tiny wires with a diameter as small as a few billionths of a meter - hold promise for devices of the future, both in technology like light-emitting diodes and in new versions of transistors and circuits for next generation of electronics. But in order to utilize the novel properties of nanowires, their composition must be precisely controlled, and researchers must better understand just exactly how the composition is determined by the synthesis conditions. http://www.physorg.com/news157894016.html Nanotechnology Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:27:29 EST news157894016 (PhysOrg.com) -- Science fiction fans still have another two months of waiting for the new Star Trek movie, but fans of actual science can feast their eyes now on the first movie ever of carbon atoms moving along the edge of a graphene crystal. Given that graphene - single-layered sheets of carbon atoms arranged like chicken wire - may hold the key to the future of the electronics industry, the audience for this new science movie might also reach blockbuster proportions. http://www.physorg.com/news157730577.html Nanotechnology Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:03:37 EST news157730577 (PhysOrg.com) -- Engineers at Ohio State University are developing a technique for mass producing computer chips made from the same material found in pencils. http://www.physorg.com/news157718787.html Nanotechnology Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:46:58 EST news157718787 (Physorg.com) -- If physicists lived in Flatland -the fictional two-dimensional world invented by Edwin Abbott in his 1884 novel -some of their quantum physics experiments would turn out differently (not just thinner) than those in our world. The distinction has taken another step from speculative fiction to real-world puzzle with a paper* from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) reporting on a Flatland arrangement of ultracold gas atoms. The new results, which don`t quite jibe with earlier Flatland experiments in Paris, might help clarify a strange property: `superfluidity.` http://www.physorg.com/news157206744.html Physics Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:33:30 EST news157206744 (PhysOrg.com) -- To be useful in real-world applications, a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) of molecules on a surface must have a stable and controllable geometry. Researchers at Penn State and the Sigma-Aldrich company have found a way to control geometry and stability by making SAMs out of different carboranethiol isomers, which are cage-like molecules. The research results will be published in the March 2009 issue of the journal ACS Nano. http://www.physorg.com/news157135442.html Nanotechnology Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:44:54 EST news157135442 The most abundant material on Earth exhibits some unusual chemical properties when placed under extreme conditions. http://www.physorg.com/news156779157.html Chemistry Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:46:43 EST news156779157 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new study answers a key question at the very heart of nanotechnology: Why are nanorods so small? http://www.physorg.com/news156683298.html Nanotechnology Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:09:38 EST news156683298 (PhysOrg.com) -- Recently, an international group of researchers discovered that the underlying mechanism producing high-temperature superconductivity in a widely studied class of copper-oxygen-based superconductors may be different than scientists have long been assuming. http://www.physorg.com/news156523499.html Physics Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:45:29 EST news156523499 (PhysOrg.com) -- Materials containing bimetallic nanoparticles are attractive in vast technological fields because of their unique catalytic, electronic, and magnetic properties. One of the most promising of the bunch is made from palladium and gold, an alloy that could be used in a wide variety of catalytic activities including the water-gas shift reaction and the oxidation of carbon dioxide - both important steps in alternative energy applications like fuel cells. http://www.physorg.com/news156446716.html Nanotechnology Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:25:44 EST news156446716 The Polymer Chemistry Research Group at the University of Helsinki, Finland, has succeeded in producing nano-sized metallic copper particles. When the size of particles is reduced to a nano-scale (one nanometre being one billionth of a metre), the properties of the material undergo substantial changes. Unlike in bulk materials, in nanoparticles the number of surface atoms is considerably greater than the number of atoms inside the material, which, among other things, makes the melting temperature of nanomaterials very low. With suitable heat treatment (sintering), the particles manufactured by the research group can be made to form electricity-conducting layers and patterns on paper. http://www.physorg.com/news156436057.html Nanotechnology Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:28:21 EST news156436057 Single oxygen atoms dancing on a metal oxide slab, glowing brighter here and dimmer there, have helped chemists better understand how water splits into oxygen and hydrogen. In the process, the scientists have visualized a chemical reaction that had previously only been talked about. The new work improves our understanding of the chemistry needed to generate hydrogen fuel from water or to clean contaminated water. http://www.physorg.com/news156433818.html Physics Mon, 16 Mar 2009 14:51:05 EST news156433818 The next time an overnight snow begins to fall, take two bricks and place them side by side a few inches apart in your yard. http://www.physorg.com/news156349503.html Physics Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:25:42 EST news156349503 (PhysOrg.com) -- The transition to environmentally benign energy sources is one of the most significant challenges of the 21st century. Solar power, which uses sunlight to generate electricity, is one promising source. It has many benefits: sunlight is free; operating solar cells emits no greenhouse gasses; and solar power can be generated almost anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, today's solar energy technologies are inefficient, and thus significantly more expensive than traditional power sources. But hope is on the horizon. Recent results from the joint SLAC-Stanford PULSE Institute for Ultrafast Energy Science may help increase efficiency more than previously thought possible. http://www.physorg.com/news156016623.html Nanotechnology Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:58:06 EST news156016623 (PhysOrg.com) -- Ever since the Bronze Age, humans have experimented with combining different metals to create alloys with properties superior to either metal alone. But not all metals readily form alloys - for some pairs of elements the atoms are too dissimilar. Now researchers in an international team have discovered that previously impossible alloys can be created by subjecting atoms to high pressure―opening up possibilities for new materials in the future. http://www.physorg.com/news155994105.html Physics Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:42:19 EST news155994105 Just as sonar sends out sound waves to explore the hidden depths of the ocean, electrons can be used by scanning tunnelling microscopes to investigate the well-hidden properties of the atomic lattice of metals. As researchers from Göttingen, Halle and Jülich now report in the high-impact journal Science, they succeeded in making bulk Fermi surfaces visible in this manner. Fermi surfaces determine the most important properties of metals. http://www.physorg.com/news154965207.html Nanotechnology Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:53:57 EST news154965207 (PhysOrg.com) -- Neutral atoms--having no net electric charge--usually don't act very dramatically around a magnetic field. But by `dressing them up` with light, researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute, a collaborative venture of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland at College Park, have caused ultracold rubidium atoms to undergo a startling transformation. http://www.physorg.com/news154769672.html Physics Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:36:38 EST news154769672 (PhysOrg.com) -- It`s something of an understatement to say Shekhar Garde has an eye for detail. A global leader in his field, Garde works to shed new light on the hidden world of atoms and molecules. Equipped with state-of-the-art advanced imaging, molecular modeling, and computer simulation tools, he is a high-tech archeologist who scrutinizes nanoscale landscapes in search of clues, patterns, and systems that could lead to a better understanding of the most basic building blocks of life. http://www.physorg.com/news154630339.html Nanotechnology Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:53:17 EST news154630339 (PhysOrg.com) -- Graphene, a single-atom-thick sheet of carbon, holds remarkable promise for future nanoelectronics applications. Whether graphene actually cuts it in industry, however, depends upon how graphene is cut, say researchers at the University of Illinois. http://www.physorg.com/news153928834.html Nanotechnology Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:01:07 EST news153928834 Imagine unloading a pile of bricks onto the ground and watching the bricks assemble themselves into a level, straight wall in only a few minutes. While merely a fantasy for builders in the everyday world, these types of self-assembled structures are a reality for those who build materials in the nanoworld. Michael C. Tringides, a senior physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, has shown that nanoscale "straight wall" lead islands on silicon are spontaneously and quickly created by unusually mobile atoms. http://www.physorg.com/news153668283.html Nanotechnology Thu, 12 Feb 2009 13:39:50 EST news153668283 (PhysOrg.com) -- Conga lines of atoms wend their way through a crystal, their numbers growing as more and more atoms join the migration. The worm-like lines of atoms randomly converge, forming tangles that evolve into droplets of liquid that signal the beginning of the complicated process known as melting. http://www.physorg.com/news152814434.html Physics Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:28:02 EST news152814434