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 U.S. military can now calibrate high-power laser systems, such as those intended to defuse unexploded mines, more quickly and easily thanks to a novel nanotube-coated power measurement device developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. http://www.physorg.com/news160839024.html Nanotechnology Wed, 06 May 2009 14:31:41 EST news160839024 Ben W. Strowbridge, Ph.D, associate professor of Neuroscience and Physiology/Biophysics, and Yuan Gao, a Ph.D. student in the neurosciences program at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, are the first to discover a form of synaptic memory in the olfactory bulb, the part of the brain that processes the sense of smell. http://www.physorg.com/news160592963.html Medicine & Health Sun, 03 May 2009 18:09:42 EST news160592963 (PhysOrg.com) -- Compact lasers which can work in formerly inaccessible parts of the spectrum and are suitable for mass production are now within reach. http://www.physorg.com/news160324237.html Physics Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:31:52 EST news160324237 (PhysOrg.com) -- When studying cold atoms, scientists often use magnetic or optical traps to keep the atoms in place. However, in some cases experimentalists want to study free atoms, avoiding the effects of a trap. "One way to study free atoms," Cass Sackett tells PhysOrg.com, "is by bouncing them off a surface... most of the time, the atoms are free." He says that scientists have been interested in bouncing atoms for a long time, but that before now only about five bounces have been achieved. "Using magnets and certain lasers, it is possible to bounce atoms. However, they are lost relatively quickly." http://www.physorg.com/news160053848.html Physics Mon, 27 Apr 2009 12:24:47 EST news160053848 Scientists have studied high-frequency brain waves, known as gamma oscillations, for more than 50 years, believing them crucial to consciousness, attention, learning and memory. Now, for the first time, MIT researchers and colleagues have found a way to induce these waves by shining laser light directly onto the brains of mice. http://www.physorg.com/news159973187.html Medicine & Health Sun, 26 Apr 2009 14:00:19 EST news159973187 With extremely short wavelengths and very high intensities, light-matter interaction seems to be different than previously accepted. http://www.physorg.com/news159788887.html Physics Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:50:29 EST news159788887 (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) -- The world's brightest X-ray source sprang to life last week at the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) offers researchers the first-ever glimpse of high-energy or "hard" X-ray laser light produced in a laboratory. http://www.physorg.com/news159556347.html Physics Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:12:48 EST news159556347 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the Centre of Molecular Materials for Photonics and Electronics (CMMPE) (part of the Department's Photonics Research Group at the University of Cambridge) are leading the way towards the development of extremely high colour resolution laser displays using liquid crystal laser technology. http://www.physorg.com/news159458998.html Physics Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:11:08 EST news159458998 (PhysOrg.com) -- A recent Montana State University master's graduate is working with doctors at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Tennessee to build a handheld laser microscope that could someday reduce the number of biopsies needed to diagnose skin cancer. http://www.physorg.com/news159200399.html Medicine & Health Fri, 17 Apr 2009 15:20:46 EST news159200399 (PhysOrg.com) -- Don't be fooled by the collection of empty soda bottles in James Cryan's office at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Cryan isn't a caffeine fiend -the cola bottles are for science. As a graduate student with the PULSE Institute for Ultrafast Energy Science, he is studying how nitrogen gas responds to stimulation by an optical laser, and he needed a container for the gas. Instead of ordering a cell and waiting for it to arrive, Cryan cast about for something close at hand -and happened upon one of the empty Coke bottles on his desk. http://www.physorg.com/news159123961.html Physics Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:06:43 EST news159123961 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 (PhysOrg.com) -- A University of Colorado at Boulder team has developed a new method of shrinking the size of circuitry used in nanotechnology devices like computer chips and solar cells by using two separate colors of light. http://www.physorg.com/news159100452.html Nanotechnology Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:34:39 EST news159100452 (PhysOrg.com) -- For the first time, scientists have succeeded in measuring and controlling the lifetime of quantum states with potential use in optoelectronic chips. This achievement is highly significant for the ongoing development of this cutting-edge technology. The breakthrough involved measuring the intersubband relaxation time of charge states in silicon-germanium SiGe structures on a picosecond scale. Experiments have also shown that it is possible to control and extend these times. As a result, this body of work - currently published in Physical Review Letters and supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF - represents a major advance in the development of data processing based on optoelectronic chips. http://www.physorg.com/news158922775.html Physics Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:13:47 EST news158922775 Applied scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) in collaboration with researchers from Hamamatsu Photonics in Hamamatsu City, Japan, have demonstrated, for the first time, lasers in which the direction of oscillation of the emitted radiation, known as polarization, can be designed and controlled at will. The innovation opens the door to a wide range of applications in photonics and communications. Harvard University has filed a broad patent on the invention. http://www.physorg.com/news158814118.html Physics Mon, 13 Apr 2009 04:02:48 EST news158814118 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 If you hate prune juice and chalky fiber supplements, just sit down and relax. Help is on the way. In a research report published online in The FASEB Journal, a team of researchers has discovered a new way to make it a lot easier to go to the bathroom, especially when all other methods fail. Specifically, they have found a group of nerve ending receptors which, when stimulated, causes the bowels to pass waste, and the specific receptor needed to activate bowel clearance. Furthermore, they tested chemicals that work with those receptors, providing a blueprint for the development of new laxatives. http://www.physorg.com/news158420857.html Medicine & Health Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:48:11 EST news158420857 (PhysOrg.com) -- The Department of Energy today announced that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has certified the completion of the historic effort to build the world's largest laser. http://www.physorg.com/news157831025.html Physics Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:57:43 EST news157831025 (PhysOrg.com) -- `Quantum wells have been instrumental in telecommunications, enabling light amplification,` Patanjali Kambhampati tells PhysOrg.com, `but theory has suggested that a very small - colloidal - quantum dot could amplify light even better than a quantum well. There have been problems, however, in getting lasers to work properly with colloidal quantum dots, so focus has shifted to other types of structures.` http://www.physorg.com/news157805833.html Physics Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:57:37 EST news157805833 A recent Montana State University master's graduate is working with doctors at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Tennessee to build a handheld laser microscope that could someday reduce the number of biopsies needed to diagnose skin cancer. http://www.physorg.com/news157654684.html Medicine & Health Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:58:32 EST news157654684 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the University of Illinois have successfully demonstrated a microwave signal mixer made from a tunnel-junction transistor laser. Development of the device brings researchers a big step closer to higher speed electronics and higher performance electrical and optical integrated circuits. http://www.physorg.com/news156712542.html Physics Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:16:31 EST news156712542 (PhysOrg.com) -- Burns or other disorders that disrupt the blood flow in tissues will soon be easier to assess thanks to a camera that is capable of imaging blood circulation in real time. Compared to an earlier version, the new optical perfusion camera (TOPCam) from Twente, the Netherlands, is a significant improvement with regard to speed, so that even small variations in blood circulation are immediately visible. http://www.physorg.com/news156705876.html Physics Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:25:28 EST news156705876 They are at present the most accurate clocks in the world: Caesium fountain clocks furnish the second accurate to 15 places after the decimal point. Until they reach this accuracy, caesium fountain clocks, however, need a certain measurement time. http://www.physorg.com/news156618694.html Physics Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:13:16 EST news156618694 Three members of the faculty at Stevens Institute of Technology recently collaborated on a paper focusing on free-space optical communication, which appears in the latest issue of Optics Express. http://www.physorg.com/news156522480.html Physics Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:28:32 EST news156522480 (PhysOrg.com) -- In an effort to prevent the spread of malaria, scientists have built a laser that shoots and kills mosquitoes. Malaria, which is caused by a parasite and transmitted by mosquitoes, kills about 1 million people every year. http://www.physorg.com/news156423566.html Physics Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:00:00 EST news156423566 Researchers in Japan have turned to mathematics to build a computerized 3D model of the female trunk that could help lingerie and other clothes designers make more sensuous, comfortable, and better fitting product ranges. http://www.physorg.com/news156096749.html Technology Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:13:00 EST news156096749 Chemists can analyze the composition of a suspected bomb -- without actually touching and possibly detonating it -- using a technique called laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, or LIBS. The tool is also commonly used for "stand-off" detection in such harsh or potentially dangerous environments as blast furnaces, nuclear reactors and biohazard sites and on unmanned planetary probes like the Mars rovers. http://www.physorg.com/news155994383.html Chemistry Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:46:55 EST news155994383 (PhysOrg.com) -- Construction of the National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world's largest and highest-energy laser system, was essentially completed on Feb. 26, when technicians at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where the laser is located, fired the first full system shot to the center of the NIF target chamber. http://www.physorg.com/news155846213.html Physics Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:37:21 EST news155846213 Two Japanese scientists will arrive at the University of Houston next month to help develop a unique brain-mapping device that promises to deliver more comprehensive and accurate insights into the mind at a fraction of the cost of current technologies. http://www.physorg.com/news155817925.html Medicine & Health Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:46:18 EST news155817925 A freak wave at sea is a terrifying sight. Seven stories tall, wildly unpredictable, and incredibly destructive, such waves have been known to emerge from calm waters and swallow ships whole. But rogue waves of light -- rare and explosive flare-ups that are mathematically similar to their oceanic counterparts -- have recently been tamed by a group of researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). http://www.physorg.com/news155478110.html Physics Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:22:15 EST news155478110