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) -- Scientists in Israel and the UK have uncovered the details of how certain fish and spiders create their iridescent scales and silvery skins. http://www.physorg.com/news179569783.html Physics Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:30:45 EST news179569783 There is more to the snowflake than its ability to delight schoolchildren and snarl traffic. http://www.physorg.com/news179416713.html Chemistry Mon, 07 Dec 2009 14:26:57 EST news179416713 (PhysOrg.com) -- Lara Estroff and colleagues have taken a deep, detailed look at the way lab-created calcite crystals, similar to those found in nature, grow in tandem with proteins and other large molecules. http://www.physorg.com/news178823885.html Chemistry Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:19:17 EST news178823885 Bacteria are quite creative when infecting the human organism. They invade cells, migrate through the body, avoid an immune response and misuse processes of the host cell for their own purposes. To this end every bacterium employs its own strategy. In collaboration with a British research group, structural biologists from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig, Germany, and the University of Bielefeld, Germany, have now elucidated one mechanism of Listeria bacteria. http://www.physorg.com/news178803891.html Biology Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:20:01 EST news178803891 (PhysOrg.com) -- Is it possible to make even more compact digital memories for portable electronic devices and which consume even less energy? A team of French researchers has recently demonstrated that it is feasible, thanks to a new class of materials known as multiferroics, which combine unusual electric and magnetic properties. http://www.physorg.com/news178546236.html Physics Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:15:20 EST news178546236 (PhysOrg.com) -- The freezing of suspensions of particles is not always a uniform phenomenon; in certain conditions it leads to a modification of the redistribution of particles and the growth of crystals. http://www.physorg.com/news177618314.html Nanotechnology Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:26:05 EST news177618314 There is good news for the global effort to reduce the amount of lead in the environment and for the growing array of technologies that rely upon the piezoelectric effect. A lead-free alternative to the current crop of piezoelectric materials has been identified by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley. http://www.physorg.com/news177340310.html Physics Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:18:46 EST news177340310 Even as research on the ribosome, one of the cell's most basic machines, is recognized with a Nobel Prize, scientists continue to achieve new insights on the way ribosomes work. http://www.physorg.com/news174834117.html Biology Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:02:28 EST news174834117 A research project 10 years in the making is now orbiting the Earth, much to the delight of its creator Rohit Trivedi, a senior metallurgist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory. Equipment recently delivered to the International Space Station by the Space Shuttle Discovery will allow the Earth-bound Trivedi to conduct crystal growth experiments he first conceived more than a decade ago. http://www.physorg.com/news172756816.html Physics Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:03:42 EST news172756816 (PhysOrg.com) -- New York University chemists have created three-dimensional DNA structures, a breakthrough bridging the molecular world to the world where we live. The work, reported in the latest issue of the journal Nature, also has a range of potential industrial and pharmaceutical applications, such as the creation of nanoelectronic components and the organization of drug receptor targets to enable illumination of their 3D structures. http://www.physorg.com/news171119747.html Chemistry Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:00:01 EST news171119747 (PhysOrg.com) -- Stanford researchers have developed a method of stacking and purifying crystal layers that may pave the way for three-dimensional microchips. http://www.physorg.com/news170527247.html Nanotechnology Wed, 26 Aug 2009 17:41:21 EST news170527247 (PhysOrg.com) -- Growing - and precisely aligning - microscopic, spear-shaped zinc oxide crystals on a surface of single-crystal silicon, researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology may have developed a method to make more efficient solar cells. http://www.physorg.com/news169223267.html Nanotechnology Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:28:04 EST news169223267 Pet owners have heard the warnings to keep certain poisonous houseplants away from their pets, such as Dieffenbachia (dumbcane), Philodendron, peace lily, and pothos. For houseplants like these and others, the problem may not just be a poison, but the presence of tiny crystals throughout the plant. http://www.physorg.com/news168797418.html Biology Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:10:01 EST news168797418 A team of researchers, led by chemical engineering and materials science professor Michael Tsapatsis in the University of Minnesota's Institute of Technology, have developed a more energy-efficient method of chemical separations that could revolutionize processes in the petrochemical and biofuels industries. The new discovery is published in the July 31 issue of Science journal. http://www.physorg.com/news168536940.html Chemistry Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:40:01 EST news168536940 (PhysOrg.com) -- Conquering one of the biggest challenges in the study of high-temperature (high-Tc) superconductors, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy`s Brookhaven National Laboratory have grown crystals of one such material that are large enough to directly measure the material`s magnetic properties. These measurements, published online on August 2 by Nature Physics, cast considerable doubt on some assumptions commonly made in trying to understand the role magnetism plays in these materials` ability to carry current with no resistance. Such materials promise more-efficient, lower-cost energy transmission if they can be made to operate under real-world conditions. http://www.physorg.com/news168529619.html Physics Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:47:39 EST news168529619 (PhysOrg.com) -- Engineers have developed a new method for creating high-performance membranes from crystal sieves called zeolites; the method could increase the energy efficiency of chemical separations up to 50 times over conventional methods and enable higher production rates. http://www.physorg.com/news168187670.html Chemistry Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:48:42 EST news168187670 A research team led by a chemist at the University of California, Riverside has fabricated microscopic polymer beads that change color instantly and reversibly when external magnetic fields acting upon the microspheres change orientation. http://www.physorg.com/news164375513.html Chemistry Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:52:32 EST news164375513 (PhysOrg.com) -- The geologic faults responsible for the rise of the eastern Andes mountains in Colombia became active 25 million years ago -18 million years before the previously accepted start date for the Andes` rise, according to researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, the University of Potsdam in Germany and Ecopetrol in Colombia. http://www.physorg.com/news161630943.html Space & Earth Fri, 15 May 2009 18:29:31 EST news161630943 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have long wondered how tiny silicate crystals, which need sizzling high temperatures to form, have found their way into frozen comets, born in the deep freeze of the solar system's outer edges. The crystals would have begun as non-crystallized silicate particles, part of the mix of gas and dust from which the solar system developed. http://www.physorg.com/news161452743.html Space & Earth Wed, 13 May 2009 17:03:47 EST news161452743 (PhysOrg.com) -- A clever materials science technique that uses a silicon crystal as a sort of nanoscale vise to squeeze another crystal into a more useful shape may launch a new class of electronic devices that remember their last state even after power is turned off. Computers that could switch on instantly without the time-consuming process of `booting` an operating system is just one of the possibilities, according to a new paper by a team of researchers spanning four universities, two federal laboratories and three corporate labs.* http://www.physorg.com/news160838773.html Nanotechnology Wed, 06 May 2009 14:26:48 EST news160838773 (PhysOrg.com) -- By sampling clouds -- and making their own -- researchers have shown for the first time a direct relation between lead in the sky and the formation of ice crystals that foster clouds. The results suggest that lead generated by human activities causes clouds to form at warmer temperatures and with less water. This could alter the pattern of both rain and snow in a warmer world. http://www.physorg.com/news159370515.html Space & Earth Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:35:46 EST news159370515 For the first time ever, a Michigan State University researcher has shown cholesterol crystals can disrupt plaque in a patient's cardiovascular system, causing a heart attack or stroke. http://www.physorg.com/news157307267.html Medicine & Health Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:28:29 EST news157307267 (PhysOrg.com) -- Working at the nanoscale level, University of Arkansas engineering researchers have created stable superhydrophilic surfaces on a glass substrate. The surfaces, made of randomly placed and densely distributed micron-sized silicon islands with nano-sized spikes, allow water to quickly penetrate textures and spread over the surface. http://www.physorg.com/news157306251.html Nanotechnology Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:12:01 EST news157306251 This week's Nature Materials (09 March 2009) reveals how an international team of scientists led by researchers at the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN) at UCL have discovered a novel one dimensional ice chain structure built from pentagons that may prove to be a step toward the development of new materials which can be used to seed clouds and cause rain. http://www.physorg.com/news155750058.html Nanotechnology Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:54:49 EST news155750058 (PhysOrg.com) -- In a world-first, scientists at the University of Glasgow have grown micro-tube structures from crystals of inorganic compounds. http://www.physorg.com/news155236276.html Chemistry Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:11:49 EST news155236276 (PhysOrg.com) -- Exquisitely detailed and beautifully symmetrical, the snowflakes that David Griffeath makes are icy jewels of art. http://www.physorg.com/news154715124.html Other Sciences Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:28:12 EST news154715124 (PhysOrg.com) -- Single atom quantum dots created by researchers at Canada`s National Institute for Nanotechnology and the University of Alberta make possible a new level of control over individual electrons, a development that suddenly brings quantum dot-based devices within reach. Composed of a single atom of silicon and measuring less than one nanometre in diameter, these are the smallest quantum dots ever created. http://www.physorg.com/news152271696.html Nanotechnology Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:42:04 EST news152271696 (PhysOrg.com) -- `In photonic crystals, the ability to control the structure of a material in full three dimensional space, allows you to control the way that light flows through it,` John Rogers tells PhysOrg.com. `This approach to photonic materials can be useful in applications ranging from communications to lasers to optical waveguides.` http://www.physorg.com/news151758574.html Physics Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:10:25 EST news151758574 (PhysOrg.com) -- Dr. Tim Wilkinson from the Department's Photonics Research Group, University of Cambridge, has made an exciting breakthrough, he has combined liquid crystals with vertically grown carbon nanotubes to create a reconfigurable three-dimensional liquid crystal device structure. http://www.physorg.com/news151250341.html Physics Thu, 15 Jan 2009 13:59:01 EST news151250341 A compact fiber-optic probe developed for the space program has now proven valuable for patients in the clinic as the first non-invasive early detection device for cataracts, the leading cause of vision loss worldwide. http://www.physorg.com/news150993396.html Medicine & Health Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:36:36 EST news150993396