Science

Tags:

Quantum phase transition underpins superconductivity in copper oxides: CIFAR researchers in Canada and France unveil key organizing principle of high-temperature superconductivity

Physicists have zoomed in on the transition that could explain why copper-oxides have such impressive superconducting powers.

Settling a 20-year debate in the field, they found that a mysterious quantum phase transition associated with the termination of a regime called the "pseudogap" causes a sharp drop in the number of conducting electrons available to pair up for superconductivity. The team hypothesizes that whatever is happening at this point is probably the reason that cuprates support superconductivity at much higher temperatures than other materials -- about half way to room temperature.

Tags:

Researchers demonstrate 'quantum surrealism'

New research demonstrates that particles at the quantum level can in fact be seen as behaving something like billiard balls rolling along a table, and not merely as the probabilistic smears that the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests. But there's a catch - the tracks the particles follow do not always behave as one would expect from "realistic" trajectories, but often in a fashion that has been termed "surrealistic."

In a new version of an old experiment, CIFAR Senior Fellow Aephraim Steinberg (University of Toronto) and colleagues tracked the trajectories of photons as the particles traced a path through one of two slits and onto a screen. But the researchers went further, and observed the "nonlocal" influence of another photon that the first photon had been entangled with.

Tags:

NASA Introduces New, Wider Set of Eyes on the Universe

After years of preparatory studies, NASA is formally starting an astrophysics mission designed to help unlock the secrets of the universe -- the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST).

Tags:

Stretchable nano-devices towards smart contact lenses: Researchers at RMIT University and the University of Adelaide have joined forces to create a stretchable nano-scale device to manipulate light

Researchers at RMIT University and the University of Adelaide have joined forces to create a stretchable nano-scale device to manipulate light.

The device manipulates light to such an extent that it can filter specific colours while still being transparent and could be used in the future to make smart contact lenses.

Tags:

Iranian Scientists Build Fuel Cells with Appropriate Performance at High Temperature

52263_0.jpg
Iranian researchers from Amirkabir University of Technology produced nanocomposite membranes that are able to improve performance of fuel cells at high temperature.

Tags:

Nanocomposite Sensors Detect Toxic Gases

Iranian researchers from Shiraz University in association with their colleagues from South Korea synthesized nanocomposites to be used in the production of sensors to detect toxic gases and gas pollutants, including carbon monoxide.

52165_0.jpg

Tags:

CU-Boulder ultrafast microscope used to make slow-motion electron movie

University of Colorado Boulder researchers have demonstrated the use of the world's first ultrafast optical microscope, allowing them to probe and visualize matter at the atomic level with mind-bending speed.

53018.jpg
This is an image captured by CU-Boulder researchers using an ultrafast optical microscope shows clouds of electrons oscillating in gold material in space and time. The width of the image is 100 nanometers (about the size of a particle that will fit through a surgical mask), while the time between the top and bottom frame (10 fs, or femtoseconds) is less than 1 trillionth of a second.

Tags:

Light used to measure the 'big stretch' in spider silk proteins

While working to improve a tool that measures the pushes and pulls sensed by proteins in living cells, biophysicists at Johns Hopkins say they've discovered one reason spiders' silk is so elastic: Pieces of the silk's protein threads act like supersprings, stretching to five times their initial length. The investigators say the tool will shed light on many biological events, including the shifting forces between cells during cancer metastasis.

53010.jpg
Public Domain

Tags:

Graphene becomes superconductive -- Electrons with 'no mass' flow with 'no resistance'

53015.jpg
This is the crystal structure of Ca-intercalated bilayer graphene fabricated on SiC substrate. Insertion of Ca atoms between two graphene layers causes the superconductivity.

Tags:

Breaking cell barriers with retractable protein nanoneedles: Adapting a bacterial structure, Wyss Institute researchers develop protein actuators that can mechanically puncture cells

The ability to control the transfer of molecules through cellular membranes is an important function in synthetic biology; a new study from researchers at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and Harvard Medical School (HMS) introduces a novel mechanical method for controlling release of molecules inside cells.

53002.gif
In this time-lapse, retractable protein actuators called "R bodies" - found naturally in certain bacteria - are seen extending from barely-visible tiny coils into long pointy tubes that are capable of rupturing cell membranes. The extension is triggered by a rise in pH level. Wyss Institute researchers have harnessed these structures and are adapting them for use in mammalian cells, which could one day lead to novel mechanisms for delivering drugs and other chemicals of interest.

Could not connect2