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Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU, Germany) have built what is currently the strongest source of ultracold neutrons. Ultracold neutrons (UCNs) were first generated here five years ago. They are much slower than thermal neutrons and are characterized by the fact that they can be stored in special containers. This property makes them important tools for experiments to investigate why matter dominates over antimatter in our universe and how the lightest elements were created directly after the Big Bang. "We have commissioned a new UCN source and improved the overall procedure so that we can now generate and store considerably more ultracold neutrons than before and more than anybody else," says Professor Werner Heil of the Institute of Physics at Mainz University. Having so far managed to achieve a density of ten UCN per cubic centimeter, the Mainz research team of chemists and physicists has become one of the global leaders in this research field.
The perfect data storage solution should offer fast access to data, maintain data in the absence of external power, and be able to withstand large numbers of read–write cycles. Phase-change random access memory (PCRAM), a type of non-volatile memory that uses the amorphous and crystalline states of phase-change materials for encoding data, can satisfy all of these criteria. Unfortunately, PCRAM also tends to have impractically high power requirements that have impeded its application in many devices. Desmond Loke and co-workers at the A*STAR Data Storage Institute have now demonstrated a technology that could help reduce the power requirements of PCRAM.
Silicon is the dominant material for the fabrication of integrated circuits and is also becoming a popular material for making photonics circuits -- miniaturized circuits that use light instead of electronic signals for processing information. One of the challenges in the field, however, has been silicon’s intrinsic sensitivity to the polarization of light, which can limit the rate of information transmission. Jing Zhang, Tsung-Yang Liow and co-workers at the A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics have now developed a novel solution to this problem.
Researchers have developed a new type of imaging technology to diagnose cardiovascular disease and other disorders by measuring ultrasound signals from molecules exposed to a fast-pulsing laser.
(PhysOrg.com) -- The quick mixing of coffee and milk after stirring or the formation of raindrops in clouds: these are just two of many phenomena in which turbulent flows play a decisive role. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization and the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon have now discovered that the seemingly random turbulent flows actually have an astonishingly uniform structure. According to the findings, vortices are a basic ingredient of turbulent flows and they behave similarly to an ice-skater performing a pirouette – a technique whereby the skater bends his or her arms to increase the speed of rotation. The researchers monitored this pirouette effect in vortices of various sizes in a turbulent liquid. In doing so, they unravelled a mystery that has confounded turbulence researchers for decades – namely the question of how energy flows from large to ever-smaller vortices, and how it is ultimately converted to heat in the smallest vortices.
(PhysOrg.com) -- It has been 100 years since the discovery of superconductivity, a state achieved when mercury was cooled, with the help of liquid helium, to nearly the coldest temperature achievable to form a superfluid that provides no resistance to electrons as they flow through it.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Like an opera singer hitting a note that shatters a glass, a signal at a particular resonant frequency can concentrate energy in a material and change its properties. And as with 18th century "musical glasses," adding a little water can change the critical pitch. Echoing both phenomena, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a unique fluid-tuned "metasurface," a concept that may be useful in biomedical sensors and microwave-assisted chemistry.
Scientists today reported that the tiny light-sensing cells known as rods have been clearly and directly imaged in the living eye for the first time. Using adaptive optics (AO), the same technology astronomers use to study distant stars and galaxies, scientists can see through the murky distortion of the outer eye, revealing the eye's cellular structure with unprecedented detail. This innovation, described in two papers in the Optical Society's (OSA) open access journal Biomedical Optics Express, will help doctors diagnose degenerative eye disorders sooner, leading to quicker intervention and more effective treatments.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Stony Brook University graduate student Qiang Zhu, together with Professor of Geosciences and Physics, Artem R. Oganov, postdoc Andriy O. Lyakhov and their colleagues from the University de Oviedo in Spain, have predicted three new forms of carbon, the findings of which were published in a paper entitled "Denser than diamond: Ab initio search for superdense carbon allotropes," in the June 7, 2011 online edition of Physical Review B. So far, each new found modification of carbon resulted in a scientific, technological revolution – the same could happen now, if scientists can find a way to synthesize these new forms of carbon.
A team of Virginia Commonwealth University scientists has discovered a new class of 'superatoms' – a stable cluster of atoms that can mimic different elements of the periodic table – with unusual magnetic characteristics.
Provided by PhysOrg.com
