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Peter Huang of the Sensor Science Division’s Temperature and Humidity group has devised a new humidity generator that enables dew-point measurements up to 98

A mathematical model created by Aalto University (Finland) researcher Timo Ikonen explains for the first time how the DNA chains in our genome are translocated through nanopores that are only a couple of nanometres thick.

(Phys.org) -- At the heart of quantum mechanics lies the wave function, a probability function used by physicists to understand the nanoscale world. Using the wave function, physicists can calculate a system's future behavior, but only with a certain probability. This inherently probabilistic nature of quantum theory differs from the certainty with which scientists can describe the classical world, leading to a nearly century-long debate on how to interpret the wave function: does it representative objective reality or merely the subjective knowledge of an observer?

New laser-effect, discovered by scientists from the Vienna University of Technology, Princeton, Yale and ETH Zurich: If coupled, lasers can switch each other off, leading to a "laser blackout".

When stacking apples on a market stall, fruit sellers "naturally" adopt a particular arrangement: a regular pyramid with a triangular base. A French-German team, which includes in particular the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, has demonstrated that this arrangement is favored for reasons of mechanical stability. This work, which is published on the Physical Review Letters (PRL) website, could contribute to the design of organized porous materials.

(Phys.org) -- Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have designed a method to evaluate different conductors for use in metamaterial structures, which are engineered to exhibit properties not possible in natural materials. The work was reported this month in Nature Photonics.

(Phys.org) -- New collaborative research has revealed the most efficient method to date for packing spherical objects into a cylinder. Dr Ho-Kei Chan, a Research Fellow from the Foams and Complex Systems research group at Trinity’s School of Physics, has developed an algorithm for sphere packing which finds an arrangement in which the spheres fit as densely as possible into the cylinder provided, an issue that has a broad range of applications.

Physicists have discovered a possible solution to a mystery that has long baffled researchers working to harness fusion. If confirmed by experiment, the finding could help scientists eliminate a major impediment to the development of fusion as a clean and abundant source of energy for producing electric power.

Real-time, 3-D microscopic tissue imaging could be a revolution for medical fields such as cancer diagnosis, minimally invasive surgery and ophthalmology.

Whether surgeons slice with a traditional scalpel or cut away with a surgical laser, most medical operations end up removing some healthy tissue, along with the bad. This means that for delicate areas like the brain, throat, and digestive tract, physicians and patients have to balance the benefits of treatment against possible collateral damage.

Physicists of the group of Prof. Anton Zeilinger at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), the University of Vienna, and the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology (VCQ) have, for the first time, demonstrated in an experiment that the decision whether two particles were in an entangled or in a separable quantum state can be made even after these particles have been measured and may no longer exist. Their results will be published this week in the journal Nature Physics.

(Phys.org) -- Can light self-bend into an arc? Can shape-preserving optical beams truly bend along a circular path? A confident answer emerged in this week’s Physical Review Letters.

Stir lots of small particles into water, and the resulting thick mixture appears highly viscous. When this dense suspension slips through a nozzle and forms a droplet, however, its behavior momentarily reveals a decidedly non-viscous side.

Scientists have taken an important step forward in developing a new material using nano-sized magnets that could ultimately lead to new types of electronic devices, with greater capacity than is currently feasible, in a study published today in the journal Science.

Researchers in Europe have succeeded in presenting an integrated tuneable transmitter on silicon - the first time this has ever happened.