Science

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How do cold ions slide

Things not always run smoothly. It may happen, actually, that when an object slides on another, the advancement may occur through a ‘stop and go' series in the characteristic manner which scientists call "stick-slip", a pervasive phenomenon at every scale, from earthquakes to daily-life objects, up to the "nano" dimension. Davide Mandelli, Andrea Vanossi and Erio Tosatti of the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) of Trieste have studied the conditions in which at the nanoscopic level the switch from smooth sliding to stick-slip regime occurs, simulating ‘toy-like' systems of ‘cold ions'.

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Ions on optical lattice.

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Nano-needles for cells

Nano-sized needles developed by researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim can force medicine into cells, even when the cell membranes offer resistance. The needles will make it easier to study the effects of medicines on cells.

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PINT-SIZED NAIL BED: Into the oven goes a thin copper plate. Out come the needles that will force stubborn cells to take their medicine.

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Forecast for Titan: Wild Weather Could be Ahead

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Ligeia Mare, shown in here in data obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, is the second largest known body of liquid on Saturn's moon Titan. It is filled with liquid hydrocarbons, such as ethane and methane, and is one of the many seas and lakes that bejewel Titan's north polar region. Cassini has yet to observe waves on Ligeia Mare and will look again during its next encounter on May 23, 2013.

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Whirlpools on the Nanoscale Could Multiply Magnetic Memory: At the Advanced Light Source, Berkeley Lab scientists join an international team to control spin orientation in magnetic nanodisks

"We spent 15 percent of home energy on gadgets in 2009, and we're buying more gadgets all the time," says Peter Fischer of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Fischer lets you know right away that while it's scientific curiosity that inspires his research at the Lab's Advanced Light Source (ALS), he intends it to help solve pressing problems.

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The electron spins in a magnetic vortex all point in parallel, either clockwise or counterclockwise. Spins in the crowded core of the vortex must point out of the plane, either up or down. The four orientations of circularity and polarity could form the cells of multibit magnetic storage and processing systems.

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Researchers Stitch Defects into the World’s Thinnest Semiconductor

In pioneering new research at Columbia University, scientists have grown high-quality crystals of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), the world's thinnest semiconductor, and studied how these crystals stitch together at the atomic scale to form continuous sheets. Through beautiful images of strikingly symmetric stars and triangles hundreds of microns across, they have uncovered key insights into the optical and electronic properties of this new material, which can be either conducting or insulating to form the basic "on-off switch" for all digital electronics.

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A false-color electron microscopy image showing the star-shaped crystals in monolayers of two-dimensional semiconducting molybdenum disulfide. The red, yellow, and blue colors represent two dominant crystal orientations that are stitched together by a line of atomic defects.

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Mega-galaxy is Missing Link in History of Cosmos

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The image at right shows a close-up of the colliding galaxies in red and green. The red data show dust-enshrouded regions of star formation. The green data show gas in the merging galaxies. The blue spots are visible-light observations of galaxies located much closer to us.

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Moonrise over Earth, by Rosetta

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Moonrise over Earth

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NASA Mars Rover Curiosity Drills Second Rock Target

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NASA's Mars rover Curiosity drilled into this rock target, "Cumberland," during the 279th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (May 19, 2013) and collected a powdered sample of material from the rock's interior. Analysis of the Cumberland sample using laboratory instruments inside Curiosity will check results from "John Klein," the first rock on Mars from which a sample was ever collected and analyzed. The two rocks have similar appearance and lie about nine feet (2.75 meters) apart.

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Competition in the Quantum World

Innsbruck physicists led by Rainer Blatt and Peter Zoller experimentally gained a deep insight into the nature of quantum mechanical phase transitions. They are the first scientists that simulated the competition between two rival dynamical processes at a novel type of transition between two quantum mechanical orders.

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The physicists engineer a classical environment, which generates dissipative dynamics, leading to fragile long-range quantum mechanical correlations between distant particles.

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Rice unveils method for tailoring optical processors: Arranging nanoparticles in geometric patterns allows for control of light with light

Rice University scientists have unveiled a robust new method for arranging metal nanoparticles in geometric patterns that can act as optical processors that transform incoming light signals into output of a different color.

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By arranging optically tuned gold discs in a closely spaced pattern, Rice University scientists created intense electrical fields and enhanced the nonlinear optical properties of the system. Here a computer model displays the plasmonic interactions that give rise to the intense fields.