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By harnessing quantum dots—tiny light-emitting semiconductor particles a few billionths of a meter across—researchers at the University of Washington (UW) have developed a new and vastly more targeted way to stimulate neurons in the brain. Being able to switch neurons on and off and monitor how they communicate with one another is crucial for understanding—and, ultimately, treating—a host of brain disorders, including Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, and even psychiatric disorders such as severe depression. The research was published today in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Biomedical Optics Express.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A Cambridge team have built a semiconductor chip that converts electrons into a quantum state that emits light but is large enough to see by eye. Because their quantum superfluid is simply set up by shining laser beams on the device, it can lead to practical ultrasensitive detectors.

By Duncan Graham-Rowe of Nature magazine Flexible, transparent lithium-ion batteries have been made by a team of researchers at Stanford University in California, a technological leap that could spawn see-through electronic gadgets such as translucent iPads. Many electronic components can be fabricated to be transparent, but so far this hasn't been possible for the power supply, says materials scientist Yi Cui, who led the work, which is published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Batteries are normally made up of a pair of electrodes separated by an electrolytic solution, with something to conduct the current to an external circuit, and packaging to hold it all together.

By Ewen Callaway of Nature magazine Fossilized teeth of early human ancestors bear signs that females left their families when they came of age, whereas males stayed close to home. A chemical analysis of australopithecine fossils ranging between roughly 1.8 million and 2.2 million years old from two South African caves finds that teeth thought to belong to females are more likely to have incorporated minerals from a distant region during formation than those from males