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) -- While quantum dots have existed since the 1980s, only in the past decade have physicists successfully created lateral few-electron single quantum dots. These quantum dots enable physicists to manipulate quantum spins, which could be used as qubits for quantum information applications. Along these lines, a team of physicists from the National Research Council in Canada who were responsible for the original lateral few-electron single quantum dot have recently designed a new few-electron triple quantum dot circuit, and demonstrated that all three quantum dots can be tuned in resonance. http://www.physorg.com/news178789034.html Nanotechnology Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:10:01 EST news178789034 (PhysOrg.com) -- A group in The Netherlands has achieved a first: injection of spin-polarized electrons in silicon at room temperature. This has previously been observed only at extremely low temperatures, and the achievement brings spintronic devices using silicon as a semiconductor a step closer. http://www.physorg.com/news178526124.html Physics Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:36:59 EST news178526124 Does your laptop sometimes get so hot that it can almost be used to fry eggs? New technology may help cool it and give information technology a unique twist, says Jairo Sinova, a Texas A&M University physics professor. http://www.physorg.com/news176037299.html Physics Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:15:50 EST news176037299 A multidisciplinary team of UC researchers is the first to find an innovative and novel way to control an electron's spin orientation using purely electrical means. http://www.physorg.com/news175871026.html Nanotechnology Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:05:04 EST news175871026 (PhysOrg.com) -- For decades, the transistors inside radios, televisions and other everyday items have transmitted data by controlling the movement of the electron`s charge. Scientists now have discovered that transistors could use less energy, generate less heat and operate at higher speeds if they exploited another property of the electron: its spin. http://www.physorg.com/news175283352.html Nanotechnology Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:40:01 EST news175283352 South Korean scientists said Friday they had demonstrated a spin-injected field effect transistor in a high-mobility InAs heterostructure. http://www.physorg.com/news172478181.html Nanotechnology Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:37:20 EST news172478181 (PhysOrg.com) -- While researchers have already demonstrated the building blocks for few-bit quantum computers, scaling these systems up to large quantum computers remains a challenge. One of the biggest problems is developing physical systems that can reliably store thousands of qubits, and enabling bits and pairs to be addressed individually for gate operations. http://www.physorg.com/news171705608.html Physics Wed, 09 Sep 2009 09:02:02 EST news171705608 Move over, silicon -- it may be time to give the Valley a new name. Physicists at the Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have confirmed the existence of a type of material that could one day provide dramatically faster, more efficient computer chips. http://www.physorg.com/news164289676.html Physics Mon, 15 Jun 2009 13:50:01 EST news164289676 French physicists said on Sunday they had used ultra-fast lasers that could accelerate storage and retrieval of data on hard discs by up to 100,000 times, pointing the way to a new generation of IT wizardry. http://www.physorg.com/news162995052.html Physics Sun, 31 May 2009 13:24:50 EST news162995052 (PhysOrg.com) -- Multiferroics are materials in which unique combinations of electric and magnetic properties can simultaneously coexist. They are potential cornerstones in future magnetic data storage and spintronic devices provided a simple and fast way can be found to turn their electric and magnetic properties on and off. In a promising new development, researchers with the DOE's Berkeley Lab working with a prototypical multiferroic have successfully demonstrated just such a switch -- electric fields. http://www.physorg.com/news162223157.html Physics Fri, 22 May 2009 15:01:46 EST news162223157 (PhysOrg.com) -- New work by condensed-matter theorists at the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Science at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory points to a material that could one day be used to make faster, more efficient computer processors. http://www.physorg.com/news161615953.html Physics Fri, 15 May 2009 14:21:02 EST news161615953 Researchers from the Kavli Institute of NanoScience in Delft are the first to have successfully captured a single electron in a highly tunable carbon nanotube double quantum dot. This was made possible by a new approach for producing ultraclean nanotubes. Moreover, the team of researchers, under the leadership of Spinoza winner Leo Kouwenhoven, discovered a new sort of tunneling as a result of which electrons can fly straight through obstacles. The results of the research were published by Nature Nanotechnology on April 5, 2009. http://www.physorg.com/news161521344.html Nanotechnology Thu, 14 May 2009 12:03:58 EST news161521344 In the first demonstration of its kind, researchers at the University of British Columbia have controlled the spin of electrons using a ballistic technique--bouncing electrons through a microscopic channel of precisely constructed, two-dimensional layer of semiconductor. http://www.physorg.com/news159022445.html Physics Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:54:39 EST news159022445 (PhysOrg.com) -- By controlling the collective spin state of highly mobile electrons in semiconductors, researchers in the Materials Sciences Division (MSD) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have taken a major step forward in the technology of spintronics. At the same time they have discovered a new conservation law, an important advance in fundamental physics. http://www.physorg.com/news157889543.html Physics Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:12:51 EST news157889543 Duke University chemists are using modified magnetic resonance imaging to see molecular changes inside people's bodies that could signal health problems such as cancer. http://www.physorg.com/news157297184.html Chemistry Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:40:18 EST news157297184 (PhysOrg.com) -- In many developing countries, electricity is unreliable or unavailable and water must be carried by hand, so conventional modern washing machines are not an option. Washing clothes can take up a significant amount of time, and doing laundry in open streams or lakes can add to water pollution, so the availability of a human-powered washing machine could make a big difference to the quality of life. http://www.physorg.com/news154280985.html Technology Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:50:13 EST news154280985 (PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of scientists led by a Princeton University group recently discovered that on the surface of certain materials collective arrangements of electrons move in ways that mimic the presence of a magnetic field where none is present. The finding represents one of the most exotic macroscopic quantum phenomena in condensed-matter physics: a topological Quantum Spin Hall effect. http://www.physorg.com/news153672136.html Physics Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:43:03 EST news153672136 Many hopes are pinned on spintronics. In the future it could replace electronics, which in the race to produce increasingly rapid computer components, must at sometime reach its limits. Different from electronics, where whole electrons are moved, here it is a matter of manipulating a certain property of the electron, its spin. For this reason, components are needed in which electrons can be injected successively into the electron, and one must be able to manipulate the spin of the single electrons, e.g. with the aid of magnetic fields. http://www.physorg.com/news151767699.html Physics Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:25:44 EST news151767699 Many hopes are pinned on spintronics. In the future it could replace electronics, which in the race to produce increasingly rapid computer components, must at sometime reach its limits. Different from electronics, where whole electrons are moved (the digital "one" means "an electron is present on the component", zero means "no electron present"), here it is a matter of manipulating a certain property of the electron, its spin. For this reason, components are needed in which electrons can be injected successively, and one must be able to manipulate the spin of the single electrons, e.g. with the aid of magnetic fields. Both are possible with a single electron pump, as scientists of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) have, together with colleagues from Latvia, now shown. They will present their results in the current issue of Applied Physics Letters. http://www.physorg.com/news151234998.html Physics Thu, 15 Jan 2009 09:43:18 EST news151234998 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have become the first to observe the Magnus effect in light, potentially opening a new avenue for controlling light in nanometer-scale optical devices, which could lead to much faster computation data processing. The discovery also provides a more precise way to study important physical behavior that until now could only be observed in relatively complex, messy condensed matter systems. The findings are published in the December 2008 issue of Nature Photonics. http://www.physorg.com/news148140149.html Physics Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:02:29 EST news148140149 (PhysOrg.com) -- The promise of quantum computing is that it will dramatically outshine traditional computers in tackling certain key problems: searching large databases, factoring large numbers, creating uncrackable codes and simulating the atomic structure of materials. http://www.physorg.com/news146329499.html Physics Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:04:59 EST news146329499 Researchers at Boston University working with collaborators in Germany, France and Korea have developed a nanoscale torsion resonator that measures miniscule amounts of twisting or torque in a metallic nanowire. This device, the size of a speck of dust, might enable measurements of the untwisting of DNA and have applications in spintronics, fundamental physics, chemistry and biology. http://www.physorg.com/news144852574.html Nanotechnology Sun, 02 Nov 2008 12:49:34 EST news144852574 (PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists have recently discovered that heating one side of a magnetized nickel-iron rod causes electrons to rearrange themselves according to their spins. This so-called "spin Seebeck effect" could lead to batteries that generate magnetic currents, rather than electric currents. A source of magnetic currents could be especially useful for the development of spintronics devices, which use magnetic currents in order to reduce overheating in computer chips, since, unlike electric currents, magnetic currents donīt generate heat. http://www.physorg.com/news142847923.html Physics Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:58:42 EST news142847923 Toshiba has announced their new MKxx29GSG series 1.8-inch SATA Hard drives, including the 1.8-inch 250GB(MK2529GSG) hard drive, which is the first in the industry. http://www.physorg.com/news141650320.html Electronics Fri, 26 Sep 2008 12:18:40 EST news141650320 (PhysOrg.com) -- New theory work at the U.S. Department of Energy`s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has shown that more than half of the spin of the proton is the result of the movement of its building blocks: quarks. The result, published in the Sept. 5 issue of Physical Review Letters, agrees with recent experiments and supercomputer calculations. http://www.physorg.com/news140363908.html Physics Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:58:28 EST news140363908 (PhysOrg.com) -- An experiment carried out at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) has realized spin torque switching of a nanomagnet as fast as the fundamental speed limit allows. Using this so-called ballistic switching future non-volatile magnetic memories could operate as fast as the fastest non-volatile memories. The experiments are described in the next issue of Physical Review Letters (22 August, 2008). http://www.physorg.com/news138272910.html Physics Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:08:30 EST news138272910 (PhysOrg.com) -- University of Utah physicists successfully controlled an electrical current using the "spin" within electrons - a step toward building an organic "spin transistor": a plastic semiconductor switch for future ultrafast computers and electronics. http://www.physorg.com/news138198499.html Physics Sun, 17 Aug 2008 13:28:19 EST news138198499 (PhysOrg.com) -- "Ye canna change the laws of physics!" Scotty warned Captain Kirk on Star Trek. But engineers and physicists at the University of Maryland may rewrite one of them. http://www.physorg.com/news137335983.html Physics Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:53:03 EST news137335983 Researchers at McGill University's Department of Physics - along with colleagues from several countries - have confirmed a long-held prediction of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, via observations of a binary-pulsar star system. Their results will be published July 3 in the journal Science. http://www.physorg.com/news134313018.html Physics Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:10:18 EST news134313018 One of the more promising types of materials for use in spintronics today is the class of metal alloys known as Heusler alloys. These alloys are named after a German engineer, and might be useful in technology in which electron quantum spin states are used to enhance electronic devices. Additionally, Heusler alloys may have an effect in quantum memory processing and telecommunications. http://www.physorg.com/news134042034.html Physics Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:53:54 EST news134042034