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Japanese researchers have been immersing iron-based compounds in hot alcoholic beverages such as red wine, sake and shochu to induce superconductivity.

A new microscope invented by scientists at Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus will let researchers use an exquisitely thin sheet of light -- similar to that used in supermarket bar-code scanners -- to peer inside single living cells, revealing the three-dimensional shapes of cellular landmarks in unprecedented detail. The microscopy technique images at high speed, so researchers can create dazzling movies that make biological processes, such as cell division, come alive.

Transmitting information as pulses of light through fiber-optic cables is the fastest and highest-bandwidth communications technology that exists today. Yet even this technology is being pressed to carry ever-greater quantities of information.

The properties of a material are greatly affected by the electrical and magnetic structure of its constituent ions and electrons. In a ferromagnet, for example, neighboring electron spins point in the same direction, producing a strong external magnetic field

In 1897, H.G. Wells created a fictional scientist who became invisible by changing his refractive index to that of air, so that his body could not absorb or reflect light. More recently, Harry Potter disappeared from sight after wrapping himself in a cloak spun from the pelts of magical herbivores.

What do lithium ion batteries and 2500-year-old Greek pottery have in common? One answer is surfaces. And surfaces are where chemistry happens.

The importance of silicon for almost every element in modern-day electronic devices and computers is due largely to its crystalline atomic structure.

Optics researchers from the Universities of Glasgow and Bristol have developed an iPad application for accurate, easy and intuitive use of optical tweezers.

(PhysOrg.com) -- In the early 20th century, two famous discoveries about spin were made.

Physicists and mathematicians from the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain are putting paid to the theory that two languages cannot co-exist in one society.

Black holes are some of the heaviest objects in the universe. Electrons are some of the lightest. Now physicists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have shown how charged black holes can be used to model the behavior of interacting electrons in unconventional superconductors.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Rotational transitions induced in molecules on a chip could have important applications in quantum computing.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Quantum computers are computers that exploit the weird properties of matter at extremely small scales. Many experts believe that a full-blown quantum computer could perform calculations that would be hopelessly time consuming on classical computers, but so far, quantum computers have proven hard to build.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), a collaboration of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland-College Park, have for the first time caused a gas of atoms to exhibit an important quantum phenomenon known as spin-orbit coupling. Their technique opens new possibilities for studying and better understanding fundamental physics and has potential applications to quantum computing, next-generation "spintronics" devices and even "atomtronic" devices built from ultracold atoms.

(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the subjects of immense interest to scientists (and non-scientists as well) is the development of quantum computers. However, there are many challenges associated with quantum computing. One of the difficulties to achieving practical quantum computing is related to the way the quantum bits (qubits) that make up a quantum computer are connected together.