Science | WPN World People News

In this image, the “smart sponges” are exposed to high glucose levels and are swelling to release insulin.

A snow line has been imaged in a far-off infant planetary system for the very first time. The snow line, located in the disc around the Sun-like star TW Hydrae, promises to tell us more about the formation of planets and comets, the factors that decide their composition, and the history of the Solar System.

In this artistic illustration of an interactive e-skin device, the intensity of the emitted light corresponds to how hard the surface is pressed.

New results being presented at the EPS-HEP conference in Stockholm, Sweden, this afternoon (19th July 2013) have put the Standard Model of particle physics to one of its most stringent tests to date. The CMS and LHCb experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider will present measurements of one of the rarest measureable processes in physics: the decay of a Bs (pronounced B-sub-s) particle into two muons.

Infrared laser light (purple) from below a sample (blue) excites ring-shaped nanoscale plasmonic resonator structures (gold). Hot spots (white) form in the rings' gaps. In these hot spots, infrared absorption is enhanced, allowing for more sensitive chemical recognition. A scanning AFM tip detects the expansion of the underlying material in response to absorption of infrared light.

Debris disks around stars naturally form complex structures without the presence of a planet. This image shows the dust density and the growth of structure in a simulated disk, which extends about 100 times farther from its star than Earth's orbit around the sun. At left, the disk is seen from a 24-degree angle; at right, it's face-on. Lighter colors show greater dust concentrations.

Design concept for a smart hyperthermia nanofiber system that uses magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) dispersed in temperature-responsive polymers. Anticancer drug, doxorubicin (DOX), is also incorporated into the nanofibers. The nanofibers are chemically crosslinked. First, the device signal (alternating magnetic field, AMF) is turned 'on' to activate the MNPs in the nanofibers. Then, the MNPs generate heat to collapse the polymer networks in the nanofiber, allowing the 'on-off' release of DOX. Both the generated heat and released DOX induce apoptosis of cancer cells by hyperthermic and chemotherapeutic effects, respectively.

Chemists at Boston College and Nagoya University in Japan have synthesized the first example of a new form of carbon. The new material consists of multiple identical pieces of "grossly warped graphene," each containing exactly 80 carbon atoms joined together in a network of 26 rings, with 30 hydrogen atoms decorating the rim. Because they measure slightly more than a nanometer across, these individual molecules are referred to generically as "nanocarbons."

The height above the plane of this diagram represents the energy required to break a superconducting pair of electrons into separate heavy fermions traveling in different directions (as determined from the quasiparticle scattering patterns). The maximum height is at the locations predicted if the "glue" holding the electron pairs together is magnetism.