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(PhysOrg.com) -- Used in Hollywood and the advertising industry to create exotic special effects, ferrofluids are seemingly magical materials that are both liquid and magnetic at once. In a study published today in Physical Review B, Yale electrical engineering professor Hur Koser and colleagues from the University of Georgia and Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrate for the first time an approach that allows ferrofluids to be pumped by magnetic fields alone. The invention could lead to new applications for this mysterious material.

Today’s computers, which are based on classical mechanics, process information coded in long streams of 1s and 0s.

Researchers have developed two new components that could help Europe meet some of its most pressing communication challenges in optical amplifier research.

If solar cells could generate higher voltages when sunlight falls on them, they'd produce more electrical power more efficiently. For over half a century scientists have known that ferroelectrics, materials whose atomic structure allows them to have an overall electrical polarization, can develop very high photovoltages under illumination

(PhysOrg.com) -- Stony Brook University researchers,

Sometimes solving the biggest challenges begins with understanding something very small -- like the tiny grains that form a piece of metal. For a team of scientists who wanted to improve automotive fuel efficiency, understanding and controlling the size of the grains in aluminum allowed the design of an easy and inexpensive method for producing lightweight automotive parts, replacing heavier steel, leading to improved fuel efficiency

The last missing piece of scientists’ fundamental model of particle physics is running out of places to hide.

Today's wireless-sensor networks can do everything from supervising factory machinery to tracking environmental pollution to measuring the movement of buildings and bridges. Working together, distributed sensors can monitor activity along an oil pipeline or throughout a forest, keeping track of multiple variables at a time.

By destabilizing superconductivity with a strong magnetic field, the electrons of a "high temperature" superconductor align into linear filaments. This phenomenon has been demonstrated by a team of researchers at the CNRS Laboratoire National des Champs Magnetiques Intenses. Published in Nature on the 8 September 2011, these results add a new piece to the puzzle that condensed-matter physicists have been trying to put together for nearly twenty-five years.

Intense magnetic fields were probably generated in the universe shortly after the Big Bang, according to an international team led by Christoph Federrath and Gilles Chabrier of the CRAL (Centre de Recherche Astrophysique de Lyon, France). The project offers the first explanation for the presence of intergalactic and interstellar magnetized gas

(PhysOrg.com) -- The ability to manipulate light and fluids on a single chip, broadly called "optofluidics," has led to such technologies as liquid-crystal displays and liquid-filled optical fibers for fast data transfer. Optofluidics is now also on the cusp of improving such green technologies as solar-powered bioreactors, say Cornell researchers.

(PhysOrg.com) -- By finding a clever way to use the Earth itself as a scientific instrument, members of a SLAC-led research team turned the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope into a positron detector – and confirmed a startling discovery from 2009 that found an excess of these antimatter particles in cosmic rays, a possible sign of dark matter.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Deep within a silver and lean mine in Naica, Mexico, scientists discovered what is now known as Cueva de los Cristales, or Cave of Crystals, close to a decade ago. The gypsum crystals found in this cave measure as long as 11 meters (36 feet) and as thick as 1 meter (3 feet). While these crystals are beautiful and reminiscent of a Superman film, they have had scientists stumped since their discovery

Northwestern University scientists have developed new materials that can detect hard radiation, a very difficult thing to do. The method could lead to a handheld device for detecting nuclear weapons and materials, such as a "nuclear bomb in a suitcase" scenario.

Legend tells of Greek engineer and inventor Archimedes using parabolic mirrors to create "heat rays" to burn the ships attacking Syracuse. Though the underpinnings of that claim are speculative at best, a modern-day team of researchers at the Scientific and Production Association in Uzbekistan has proposed a more scientifically sound method of harnessing parabolic mirrors to drive solar-powered lasers.