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Light traveling in an optical fiber loses power over distance. A number of factors are responsible for this power loss, but one that is particularly important at high data rates is the loss that occurs due to changes in light polarization. Hui Dong at the A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research and co-workers1 have developed and tested a method of determining this polarization-dependent loss (PDL) in an optical fiber cable by taking measurements from just one end of the fiber

Knots can now be tied systematically in the microscopic world. A team of scientists led by Uros Tkalec from the Jozef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana (Slovenia), who has been working at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Gottingen (Germany) since September 2010, has now found a way to create every imaginable knot inside a liquid crystal.

Early Earth's atmosphere provided little shielding for ultraviolet light from space, so many prebiotic molecules, bombarded by it and light of other wavelengths, had a hard time surviving at all.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Neutrons, those particles that reside here on Earth inside the nucleus of atoms, along with protons, collectively called nucleons, are thought to exist in the far reaches of the universe inside of so-named neutron stars, which are the remnants of stars that have exploded. In a paper published on the preprint server arXiv, Spanish physicists Felipe Llanes-Estrada, and Gaspar Moreno Navarro, suggest that the densities in the cores of certain sizes of such neutron stars might be so great as to squash the neutrons down from their normal spherical shape, into cubes.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have tried this with sophisticated meta-materials, but at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) it has now been done with simple metals; materials with a negative refractive index bend light the "wrong" way.

Chemists at Harvard and three other institutions have created a purified version of an organic semiconductor with electrical properties that put it among a small handful of organic compounds and that provides an important proof of concept for a screening process to find new compounds for solar panels.

Using an ultrafast femtosecond laser, researchers at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., were able to label, draw patterns on, and remove individual melanocytes cells from a species of frog tadpole (Xenopus) without damaging surrounding cells and tissues.

A team of researchers from four Boston-area institutions led by Nicusor Iftimia from Physical Sciences, Inc. has demonstrated for the first time that optical coherence tomography (OCT), a high resolution optical imaging technique that works by bouncing near-infrared laser light off biological tissue, can reliably distinguish between pancreatic cysts that are low-risk and high-risk for becoming malignant. Other optical techniques often fail to provide images that are clear enough for doctors to differentiate between the two types.

Quantum communication could be an option for the absolutely secure transfer of data. The key component in quantum communication over long distances is the special phenomenon called entanglement between two atomic systems. Entanglement between two atomic systems is very fragile and up until now researchers have only been able to maintain the entanglement for a fraction of a second.

(PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of researchers studying the quantum mechanical particles has discovered some unusual properties that could aid the construction of quantum computers.

More affordable and efficient solar cells, batteries and lighting systems could result from a new X-ray lens that will let scientists study the nanoscale in greater detail than ever before.

The physics world was abuzz with some tantalizing news a couple of weeks ago. At a meeting of the European Physical Society in Grenoble, France, physicists -- including some from Caltech -- announced that the latest data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) might hint at the existence of the ever-elusive Higgs boson.

(PhysOrg.com) -- The world economy is becoming ever more reliant on high tech electronics such as computers featuring fingernail-sized microprocessors crammed with billions of transistors. For progress to continue, for Moore’s Law---according to which the number of computer components crammed onto microchips doubles every two years, even as the size and cost of components halves---to continue, new materials and new phenomena need to be discovered.

Decades after the bullets have stopped flying, wars can leave behind a lingering danger: landmines that maim civilians and render land unusable for agriculture. Minefields are a humanitarian disaster throughout the world, and now researchers in Scotland have designed a new device that could more reliably sense explosives, helping workers to identify and deactivate unexploded mines.

By combining two frontier technologies, spintronics and straintronics, a team of researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University has devised perhaps the world's most miserly integrated circuit.