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. 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 A group of scientists in California is trying to develop a cheaper, less invasive way to spot the early stages of retinal damage from diabetic retinopathy, the leading cause of blindness in American adults, before it leads to blindness. As described in the special Interactive Science Publishing (ISP) issue of Optics Express, the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal, the scientists are using beams of light to measure blood flow in the back of the eye. http://www.physorg.com/news156007813.html Physics Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:30:59 EST news156007813 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers have already known that carbon nanotube thin films have mechanical and conductive advantages that could make them useful as electrodes in solar cells, solid state lighting, and electronic displays. However, studies so far have focused on how well nanotube films transmit light in the visible range, but have not explored the films` infrared properties. http://www.physorg.com/news155993510.html Nanotechnology Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:32:47 EST news155993510 Italian Renaissance painter Caravaggio used revolutionary optical instruments to "photograph" his models more than 200 years before the invention of the camera, according to a researcher in Florence. http://www.physorg.com/news155889108.html Technology Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:34:13 EST news155889108 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 (PhysOrg.com) -- Metallic nanoparticles and other structures can manipulate light in ways that are not possible with conventional optical materials. In a recent example of this, Rice University researchers discovered that cup-shaped gold nanostructures can bend light in a controllable way. The cups act like three-dimensional nano-antennas. http://www.physorg.com/news155295096.html Nanotechnology Tue, 03 Mar 2009 09:32:07 EST news155295096 (PhysOrg.com) -- Try to picture putting some atoms under a microscope. Even if you could pick them up, put them on a slide and get them to stay still, you still could not see them with even the most powerful optical microscope. http://www.physorg.com/news155235288.html Nanotechnology Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:55:22 EST news155235288 A University of Pennsylvania team has completed the first successful demonstration of a noninvasive optical device to monitor cerebral blood flow in patients with acute stroke, a leading cause of disability and death. http://www.physorg.com/news155227588.html Medicine & Health Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:47:23 EST news155227588 Optical technology developed by a Northwestern University professor of biomedical engineering has been shown to be effective in detecting the presence of pancreatic cancer through analysis of neighboring tissue in the duodenum, according to clinical trial results published in the journal Disease Markers. http://www.physorg.com/news155225944.html Medicine & Health Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:19:46 EST news155225944 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of Vanderbilt scientists have invented the world's smallest version of the periscope and are using it to look at cells and other micro-organisms from several sides at once. http://www.physorg.com/news154791239.html Biology Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:34:49 EST news154791239 An engineered metamaterial proved it can function as a state-of-the-art device in the complex terahertz range of the electromagnetic spectrum, setting a standard of performance for modulating tiny waves of radiation, according to a team of researchers from Boston College, the Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories, and Boston University. http://www.physorg.com/news154698749.html Physics Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:53:21 EST news154698749 (PhysOrg.com) -- `People are interested in the mid-infrared,` Dan Wasserman tells PhysOrg.com. Infrared light has a wavelength longer than visible light, and many molecules have numerous very strong optical resonances in the midinfrared. `Because of this, the midinfrared is an important wavelength range for trace gas sensing applications.` In addition the midinfrared is also of interest for applications such as thermal imaging, countermeasures, and even free space communication. http://www.physorg.com/news154609081.html Physics Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:59:14 EST news154609081 (PhysOrg.com) -- Space scientists from the University of Leicester are keeping a close eye on a ‘green comet` fast approaching the Earth - reaching its nearest point to us on February 24. http://www.physorg.com/news154342687.html Space & Earth Fri, 20 Feb 2009 08:59:08 EST news154342687 People debating politics are well-advised to shed more light than heat. Engineers working in optical technologies have the same aspiration. http://www.physorg.com/news154097655.html Nanotechnology Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:54:46 EST news154097655 (PhysOrg.com) -- Tiny light-emitting diodes with optical microsystems that can produce all the colors of the rainbow, a new method for producing printed circuit boards - Fraunhofer researchers are showing innovative developments at the nano tech 2009 exhibition in Japan. http://www.physorg.com/news153595435.html Nanotechnology Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:25:00 EST news153595435 (PhysOrg.com) -- University of Utah physicists and chemists developed a new method that uses a mirror of tiny silver "nanoparticles" so microscopes can reveal the internal structure of nearly opaque biological materials like bone, tumor cells and the iridescent green scales of the so-called "photonic beetle." http://www.physorg.com/news153045563.html Nanotechnology Thu, 05 Feb 2009 08:39:58 EST news153045563 (PhysOrg.com) -- By integrating a solid-state electron emitter and a microcavity plasma device, researchers at the University of Illinois have created a plasma transistor that could be used to make lighter, less expensive and higher resolution flat-panel displays. http://www.physorg.com/news152973325.html Physics Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:36:20 EST news152973325 The shapes of some of the tiniest cellular structures are coming into sharper focus at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus, where scientists have developed a new imaging technology that produces the best three-dimensional resolution ever seen with an optical microscope. http://www.physorg.com/news152817553.html Physics Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:19:41 EST news152817553 Sliced light is how we communicate now. Millions of phone calls and cable television shows per second are dispatched through fibers in the form of digital zeros and ones formed by chopping laser pulses into bits. This slicing and dicing is generally done with an electro-optic modulator, a device for allowing an electric signal to switch a laser beam on and off at high speeds (the equivalent of putting your hand in front of a flashlight). Reading that fast data stream with a compact and reliable receiver is another matter. A new error-free speed-reading record using a compact ultra-fast component -640 Gbits/second (Gbps, or billion bits per second) -has now been established by a collaboration of scientists from Denmark and Australia, who report their results in the journal Optics Express. http://www.physorg.com/news152803534.html Technology Mon, 02 Feb 2009 13:26:02 EST news152803534 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from Utrecht University, in The Netherlands, have demonstrated a new way to get a real-time, microscopic view of the inner workings of catalytic reactions. http://www.physorg.com/news152467177.html Chemistry Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:00:26 EST news152467177 (PhysOrg.com) -- Since 1970, scientists have been working with `optical tweezers` - lasers that move microscopic amounts of matter using forces originating from the light matter interaction. Now, for the first time, researchers have demonstrated that light-induced forces can move macroscopic amounts of matter, as well. http://www.physorg.com/news152456596.html Physics Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:04:04 EST news152456596 (PhysOrg.com) -- Anyone who has ever battled a stuck zipper knows it's a good idea to see what's stuck, where and how badly -- and then to pull hard. A Cornell research team's experiments involve the "unzipping" of single DNA molecules. By mapping the hiccups, stoppages and forces along the way, they have gained new insight into how genes are packed and expressed within cells. http://www.physorg.com/news152382840.html Biology Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:34:20 EST news152382840 (PhysOrg.com) -- A joint team of researchers at CIC nanoGUNE (San Sebastian, Spain) and the Max Planck Institutes of Biochemistry and Plasma Physics (Munich, Germany) report the non-invasive and nanoscale resolved infrared mapping of strain fields in semiconductors. The method, which is based on near-field microscopy, opens new avenues for analyzing mechanical properties of high-performance materials or for contact-free mapping of local conductivity in strain-engineered electronic devices (Nature Nanotechnology, advanced online publication, 11 Jan. 2009). http://www.physorg.com/news151930864.html Nanotechnology Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:01:37 EST news151930864 Tiny disk-shaped lasers as small as a speck of dust could one day beam information through optical computers. Unfortunately, a perfect disk will spray light out, not as a beam, but in all directions. New theoretical results, reported in the Optical Society (OSA) journal Optics Letters, explain how adding a small notch to the disk edge provides a single outlet for laser light to stream out. http://www.physorg.com/news151859217.html Physics Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:07:32 EST news151859217 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of physicists and engineers has demonstrated an optical device that filters two particles of light (or photons) based on the correlations between their polarisation that are only allowed in the seemingly bizarre quantum world. This so called "entanglement filter" passes the pair of photons only if they inhabit the same quantum state, without the user (or anything else) ever knowing what that state is. http://www.physorg.com/news151857190.html Physics Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:34:53 EST news151857190 (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 (PhysOrg.com) -- A joint team of researchers at CIC nanoGUNE (San Sebastian, Spain) and the Max Planck Institutes of Biochemistry and Plasma Physics (Munich, Germany) report the non-invasive and nanoscale resolved infrared mapping of strain fields in semiconductors. The method, which is based on near-field microscopy, opens new avenues for analyzing mechanical properties of high-performance materials or for contact-free mapping of local conductivity in strain-engineered electronic devices (Nature Nanotechnology, advanced online publication, 11 Jan. 2009). http://www.physorg.com/news150998994.html Nanotechnology Mon, 12 Jan 2009 16:09:54 EST news150998994 (PhysOrg.com) -- With the same type of fiber optic cables used in telecommunications systems, researchers from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed a way to detect and pinpoint the excavation of tunnels during times of war, such as those used for smuggling weapons into Gaza. The findings will be presented at the Defense, Security and Sensing Conference of SPIE (an international society advancing light-based research) in April 2009 in Orlando, Florida. http://www.physorg.com/news150998298.html Technology Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:58:18 EST news150998298 A new theory referred to as the Decrease-Radix Design is proposed. And based on this theory, the regulations of making multi-valued logic operation units are presented. The theory has laid down a solid foundation for the design of re-constructible logic units in ternary optical computers as well as any other multi-valued computers. http://www.physorg.com/news150719026.html Technology Fri, 09 Jan 2009 10:23:46 EST news150719026