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A discovery by physicists at UC Santa Barbara may earn silicon carbide -- a semiconductor commonly used by the electronics industry -- a role at the center of a new generation of information technologies designed to exploit quantum physics for tasks such as ultrafast computing and nanoscale sensing.

In the emerging field of tissue engineering, scientists encourage cells to grow on carefully designed support scaffolds.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Converting sunlight into electricity is not economically attractive because of the high cost of solar cells, but a recent, purely optical approach to improving luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) may ease the problem, according to researchers at Argonne National Laboratories and Penn State.

Managing light to carry computer data, such as text, audio and video, is possible today with laser light beams that are guided along a fibre-optic cable. These waves consist of countless billions of photons, which carry information down the fibre across continents.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists Praveen Ashok, Bavishna Praveen, and K. Dholakia working together at the University of St Andrews in Scotland have developed a method for testing whiskey for authenticity using a crafted device that allows for measurements via spectroscopy.

In this month's edition of Physics World, Paul Blom and Ton van Mol from the Holst Centre in Eindhoven describe a way of creating thin, flexible sheets of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) using a cheap, newspaper-style "roll-to-roll" printing process.

(PhysOrg.com) -- If hydrogen is to ever to serve as an onboard energy carrier for the transportation industry, a material will be needed that can store large amounts of hydrogen at ambient temperature and pressure.

Tractor beams -- the ability to trap and move objects using laser light -- are the stuff of science fiction, but a team of NASA scientists has won funding to study the concept for remotely capturing planetary or atmospheric particles and delivering them to a robotic rover or orbiting spacecraft for analysis.

(PhysOrg.com) -- After some 180 days of running and four hundred trillion (4x1014) proton proton collisions, the LHC’s 2011 proton run came to an end at 5.15pm yesterday evening. For the second year running, the LHC team has largely surpassed its operational objectives, steadily increasing the rate at which the LHC has delivered data to the experiments.

(PhysOrg.com) -- After some 180 days of running and four hundred trillion (4x1014) proton proton collisions, the LHC’s 2011 proton run came to an end at 5.15pm yesterday evening.

(PhysOrg.com) -- After some 180 days of running and four hundred trillion (4x1014) proton proton collisions, the LHC’s 2011 proton run came to an end at 5.15pm yesterday evening. For the second year running, the LHC team has largely surpassed its operational objectives, steadily increasing the rate at which the LHC has delivered data to the experiments.

Dark matter – there’s a growing feeling that we are getting closer to finding out the true nature of this elusive stuff. At least we are running a number of experiments that seem (on theoretical grounds) to have the capacity to identify it – and if they don’t..

Dark matter – there’s a growing feeling that we are getting closer to finding out the true nature of this elusive stuff. At least we are running a number of experiments that seem (on theoretical grounds) to have the capacity to identify it – and if they don’t... well, maybe it’s time for a rethink of the whole ball game.

Dark matter – there’s a growing feeling that we are getting closer to finding out the true nature of this elusive stuff. At least we are running a number of experiments that seem (on theoretical grounds) to have the capacity to identify it – and if they don’t...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Moore’s Law, hardly a law but undeniably a persistent trend, says that every year and a half, the number of transistors that fit on a chip roughly doubles. It’s why electronics – from smart phones to flat screens, from MP4 players to movie cameras, from tablets to supercomputers – grow ever more varied, powerful, and compact, but also ever less expensive. Whether the trend can continue until it runs up against immutable laws of nature, like the finite size of an atom, depends on how far scientists and technicians can push electronic technologies down into the nanoworld with better tools for using short-wavelength light.