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(PhysOrg.com) -- The transition-metal monoxide FeO is an archetypal example of a Mott insulator—a material that should conduct electricity under conventional band theories but becomes an insulator when measured, especially at low temperatures—and a major iron-bearing component of the Earth’s interior. Understanding the high-pressure behavior of this material is important for both solid-state physics and Earth science.

Bionic eyes and limbs made television's six million dollar man an icon, but new research suggests our existing biological structure already exhibits a valuable electrical property. Scientists have found that arteries react curiously to external electric fields, opening the door to minimally invasive detection and treatment of the U.S.'s number one killer -- heart disease.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A wide range of phenomena depend on ice – specifically, phase transitions during ice crystal surface melting. In this transition, which occurs near the melting point, the ice surface morphs into what is known as a quasi-liquid layer (QLL) – a thin layer of ice grains where the water molecules are not in rigid solid structure, yet not in the random order of liquid.

(PhysOrg.com) -- New research from the University of Bristol may disprove a long-standing conjecture made by one of the founders of quantum information science: that quantum states featuring ‘positive partial transpose’, a particular symmetry under time-reversal, can never lead to nonlocality.

UCLA researchers have explained the puzzling disappearing act of energetic electrons in Earth's outer radiation belt, using data collected from a fleet of orbiting spacecraft.

One day in 2010, Rutgers physicist Vitaly Podzorov watched a store employee showcase a kitchen gadget that vacuum-seals food in plastic.

(PhysOrg.com) -- The stock price of a company continuously changes, going up or down depending on the collective activity of a large number of investors.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have long been enamored by the gecko’s gravity defying ability to cling to walls and to let go at will, allowing it to walk around sideways, as have Spiderman enthusiasts.

Water (H2O) has a simple composition, but its dizzyingly interconnected hydrogen-bonded networks make structural characterizations challenging. In particular, the organization of water surfaces—a region critical to processes in cell biology and atmospheric chemistry—has caused profound disagreements among scientists

An electric field can displace the cloud of electrons surrounding each atom of a solid. In an effect known as polarization, the cloud centers move away slightly from the positively charged nuclei, which radically changes the optical properties of the solid.

At just over seven feet tall, Shaquille O’Neal is easy to spot in crowd. But the individual virus structures that give him, and us, a cold aren’t so easy to see.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Conventional scientific wisdom says that the interatomic forces between ions that control high-temperature processes such as melting are insensitive to the heating of the electron "glue" that binds the ions together. In effect, traditional atomistic simulations ignore electron temperature completely.

The physical property of magnetism has historically been associated with metals such as iron, nickel and cobalt; however, graphite – an organic mineral made up of stacks of individual carbon sheets – has baffled researchers in recent years by showing weak signs of magnetism.

Does antimatter behave differently in gravity than matter? Physicists at the University of California, Riverside have set out to determine the answer. Should they find it, it could explain why the universe seems to have no antimatter and why it is expanding at an ever increasing rate.

Scientists have found that micron-size particles which are trapped at fluid interfaces exhibit a collective dynamic that is subject to seemingly unrelated governing laws. These laws show a smooth transitioning from long-ranged cosmological-style gravitational attraction down to short-range attractive and repulsive forces. The study by Johannes Bleibel from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany, and his colleagues has just been published in the European Physical Journal E.