Bright future for nanowire light source

Bright future for nanowire light source from PhysOrg.com

A bio-friendly nano-sized light source capable of emitting coherent light across the visible spectrum, has been invented by a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the University of California at Berkeley. Among the many potential applications of this nano-sized light source, once the technology is refined, are single cell endoscopy and other forms of subwavelength bio-imaging, integrated circuitry for nanophotonic technology, and new advanced methods of cyber cryptography.

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New, invisible nano-fibers conduct electricity, repel dirt

New, invisible nano-fibers conduct electricity, repel dirt from PhysOrg.com

Tiny plastic fibers could be the key to some diverse technologies in the future -- including self-cleaning surfaces, transparent electronics, and biomedical tools that manipulate strands of DNA.

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Catching Waves: Measuring Self-Assembly in Action

Catching Waves: Measuring Self-Assembly in Action from PhysOrg.com

By making careful observations of the growth of a layer of molecules as they gradually cover the surface of a small silicon rectangle, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and North Carolina State University have gained basic insights into how self-propagating self-assembly wave fronts develop and have produced the first experimental verification of recently improved theoretical models of such systems.

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Massive Parallelization Made Easy?

Maryland Professor Creates Desktop Supercomputer from PhysOrg.com

A prototype of what may be the next generation of personal computers has been developed by researchers in the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering. Capable of computing speeds 100 times faster than current desktops, the technology is based on parallel processing on a single chip.

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Xerox Rolls Out Semantics-Based Search

Xerox Rolls Out Semantics-Based Search from PhysOrg.com

(AP) -- Xerox Corp. says its new search engine based on semantics will analyze the meaning behind questions and documents to help researchers find information more quickly.

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New findings challenge established views about human genome

New findings challenge established views about human genome from PhysOrg.com

A team of researchers led by University of Virginia Health System geneticists has uncovered a major secret in the mystery of how the DNA helix replicates itself time after time. It turns out that it is not just the sequence of the bases (building blocks) in the DNA, but also how loosely or tightly the chromatin (the material that makes up chromosomes) is packed at different points of the chromosome that is critical.

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Professor proposes theory of unparticle physics

Professor proposes theory of unparticle physics from PhysOrg.com

Howard Georgi, a physicist at Harvard University, has recently published a paper on so-called unparticle physics, which suggests the existence of “unparticle stuff” that cannot be accounted for by the standard model. Appearing in a recent edition of Physical Review Letters, the paper says that unparticle stuff would be very different than anything seen before.

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Drug Protects Against Diabetes And Atherosclerosis In Mice

From Science Daily:

Blocking a single protein with an experimental drug prevented and treated both type 2 diabetes and atherosclerosis in laboratory mice that had been fed unhealthy diets and were genetically predisposed to these common killers, according to an article published online at Nature on June 6, 2007.
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In one experiment, mice genetically engineered to be highly susceptible to atherosclerosis were fed high-fat diets and assigned to receive the drug or an inert substance. One set of mice was put on a high-fat “western” diet at five weeks of age; half received the inhibitor drug. A second group of animals ate the western diet for eight weeks, at which time they developed severe atherosclerosis. Then they were started on the drug to determine whether the drug could halt or reverse the disease process.

In both experiments, the drug treatment reduced the size of fatty plaques in the animals’ aortas by more than 50 percent compared to control mice.

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Scientists propose the kind of chemistry that led to life

Scientists propose the kind of chemistry that led to life from PhysOrg.com

Before life emerged on earth, either a primitive kind of metabolism or an RNA-like duplicating machinery must have set the stage – so experts believe. But what preceded these pre-life steps?

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Forgetting helps you remember the important stuff

According to this study, "forgetting helps you remember the important stuff."

So, what if you also forget the important stuff? How does that help? :-)

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Engines of Creation 2.0: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology - Updated and Expanded

Last January, an updated version of Engines of Creation was published, titled Engines of Creation 2.0: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology. Somehow, I missed the initial republication announcement.

Engines of Creation 2.0 is available for free as an e-book, published by WOWIO.

The original Engines of Creation was one of the most important books of the 20th Century. I recognized that when I first read it in December 1987--and subsequent history has proven that my initial impression was absolutely correct. It was one of the few books I have ever read that fundamentally changed my worldview.

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Time Zone Boundary Divides University Campus

SOUTHERN Cross University (New South Wales, Australia) has a rather unique problem: They're establishing a new campus at the Gold Coast Airport Development Park, which will straddle the Queensland-NSW border on Crown land abutting the southern side of the Gold Coast Airport. New South Wales observes DST. Queensland does not.

Civil time will shift back and forth by an hour in NSW, but not in Queensland. So how will classes be scheduled? What about work schedules? Vice Chancellor Paul Clark said "We will probably be the guinea pigs in many ways because there's nowhere else in Australia with feet in two different states."

Now consider this question: How well would your software handle a case like this? Would your date/time library even be up to the task?

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Researchers create new nanotechnology field

From the article "Researchers create new nanotechnology field":

Working with gold and cobalt samples, Elezzabi and his team were able to demonstrate a plasmonically-activated spintronic device that switches light on and off by controlling electron spins. Also, they believe that with a slight alteration of the sample structure the effect is non-volatile, meaning that any given result can be maintained indefinitely without the necessity of a power source.

"With the development of this technology I envision a move from semiconductors [silicon chips] to metal based electronics with light-driven circuits," Elezzabi said.

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UC San Diego physicists devise viable design for spin-based electronics

UC San Diego physicists devise viable design for spin-based electronics from PhysOrg.com

Physicists at the University of California, San Diego have proposed a design for a semiconductor computer circuit based on the spin of electrons. They say the device would be more scalable and have greater computational capacity than conventional silicon circuits.

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Single spinning nuclei in diamond offer a stable quantum computing building block

Single spinning nuclei in diamond offer a stable quantum computing building block from PhysOrg.com

At room temperature, carbon-13 nuclei in diamond create stable, controllable quantum register

Surmounting several distinct hurdles to quantum computing, physicists at Harvard University have found that individual carbon-13 atoms in a diamond lattice can be manipulated with extraordinary precision to create stable quantum mechanical memory and a small quantum processor, also known as a quantum register, operating at room temperature. The finding brings the futuristic technology of quantum information systems into the realm of solid-state materials under ordinary conditions.

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UCR physicist demonstrates how light can be used to remotely operate micromachines

UCR physicist demonstrates how light can be used to remotely operate micromachines from PhysOrg.com

Light changes the Casimir force, a weak attraction between close objects, says Umar Mohideen

A research team led by Umar Mohideen, a physicist at the University of California, Riverside, has demonstrated in the laboratory that the Casimir force – the small attractive force that acts between two close parallel uncharged conducting plates – can be changed using a beam of light, making the remote operation of micromachines a possibility.

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