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Physicists from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) have demonstrated a new technique to control the speed and direction of light using memory metamaterials whose properties can be repeatedly changed.

Optical cloaking devices that enable light to gracefully slip around a solid object were once strictly in the realm of science fiction. Today they have emerged as an exciting area of study, at least on microscopic scales.

The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment has begun its quest to answer some of the most puzzling questions about the elusive elementary particles known as neutrinos. The experiment’s first completed set of twin detectors is now recording interactions of antineutrinos (antipartners of neutrinos) as they travel away from the powerful reactors of the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group in southern China.

In a paper published in the latest issue of Nature Photonics, an international team of researchers takes an important step toward giving physicists the ability to effectively make movies of individual electrons. If the approach pans out, it would provide a way to gather data of unprecedented detail about how individual molecules interact during chemical reactions, with ramifications for not only the basic sciences but chemical engineering and pharmaceutical research as well.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Two Lehigh physicists have developed an imaging technique that makes it possible to directly observe light-emitting excitons as they diffuse in a new material that is being explored for its extraordinary electronic properties. Called rubrene, it is one of a new generation of single-crystal organic semiconductors.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Australian National University scientists have successfully bent light beams around an object on a two dimensional metal surface, opening the door to faster and cheaper computer chips working with light.

Duke engineers have already shown that they can "cloak" light and sound, making objects invisible -- now, they have demonstrated the theoretical ability to significantly increase the efficiency of ships by tricking the surrounding water into staying still.

(PhysOrg.com) -- It's been seven months since Italian physicists Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi publicly demonstrated a device that they claimed could generate large amounts of excess heat through some kind of low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR). (Previous descriptions of the process as “cold fusion” are incorrect; although the process is not completely understood, it is likely a weak interaction involving neutrons, without fusion.) The physicists call this device the Energy Catalyzer, or E-Cat.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Science has taken one more step towards creating a true real-life cloaking device. Assistant Professor Andrea Alůin and his colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin have successfully created a cloaking device capable of "hiding" a 3D object in free space from microwaves

Although physicists from two experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider and from Fermilab’s Tevatron collider recently reported at the Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics that they didn't find the Higgs boson, they're continuing to home in on the elusive particle, prompting Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the Director General of CERN, to go on record that he believes a neutral Higgs boson will be found by the LHC by the end of 2012.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Exactly 150 years after the first color photograph was produced, scientists have devised a way of employing the full spectrum of colors from synchrotron and free-electron laser x radiation to image nanometer-sized subjects with unprecedented clarity and speed, and in three dimensions. This new research technique is expected to improve imaging on the nanoscale in the quest for advances in pharmaceutical development and new materials for next-generation technologies.

The steady improvement in speed and power of modern electronics may soon hit the brakes unless new ways are found to pack more structures into microscopic spaces. Unfortunately, engineers are already approaching the limit of what light—the choice tool for "tweezing" tiny features—can achieve

New research by scientists at the University of York gives a fresh perspective on the physics of black holes.

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have for the first time linked the quantum properties of two separated ions (electrically charged atoms) by manipulating them with microwaves instead of the usual laser beams, suggesting it may be possible to replace an exotic room-sized quantum computing "laser park" with miniaturized, commercial microwave technology similar to that used in smart phones.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) are seen as a promising replacement for the liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) used in many flat-screen televisions because they are cheaper to mass-produce. Zhikuan Chen at the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering and co-workers have now shown how meticulous engineering of fluorescent molecules can dramatically increase OLED efficiency.