Physics posts
- June 13, 2011
- 11:33 PM
- 1,185 views
Computers and Electrifying Bacteria
by Paige Brown in From The Lab Bench
Computer-based simulations that use an organism's hereditary information are revealing previously unknown but essential life functions of special bacteria that can be modified to help clean our water and produce electricity for our alternative energy needs... Read more »
Mahadevan R, Palsson BØ, & Lovley DR. (2011) In situ to in silico and back: elucidating the physiology and ecology of Geobacter spp. using genome-scale modelling. Nature reviews. Microbiology, 9(1), 39-50. PMID: 21132020
- June 13, 2011
- 03:43 PM
- 461 views
Back from Paris
by Marco Frasca in The Gauge Connection
It is several days that I have no more posted on the blog but for a very good reason: I was in Paris for the Eleventh Workshop on Non-Perturbative Quantum Chromodynamics (see here). It has been a beautiful chance to see Paris with the eyes of a tourist and being immersed in a lot of [...]... Read more »
P. Castorina, V. Greco, D. Jaccarino, & D. Zappalà. (2011) A reanalysis of Finite Temperature SU(N) Gauge Theory. arXiv. arXiv: 1105.5902v1
Marco Ruggieri. (2011) The Critical End Point of Quantum Chromodynamics Detected by Chirally Imbalanced Quark Matter. arXiv. arXiv: 1103.6186v1
Irene Amado, Karl Landsteiner, & Francisco Pena-Benitez. (2011) Anomalous transport coefficients from Kubo formulas in Holography. JHEP 05 (2011) 081. arXiv: 1102.4577v3
O. Oliveira, W. de Paula, & T. Frederico. (2011) Linking Dynamical Gluon Mass to Chiral Symmetry Breaking via a QCD Low Energy Effective Field Theory. arXiv. arXiv: 1105.4899v1
Marco Frasca. (2011) Chiral symmetry in the low-energy limit of QCD at finite temperature. arXiv. arXiv: 1105.5274v2
H. M. Fried, Y. Gabellini, T. Grandou, & Y. -M. Sheu. (2009) Gauge Invariant Summation of All QCD Virtual Gluon Exchanges. Eur.Phys.J.C65:395-411,2010. arXiv: 0903.2644v2
- June 13, 2011
- 06:06 AM
- 526 views
Scientists show the evolution of the Amphitheatre
by Ben Good in B Good Science
Back before the internet, twitter and megaphones it was a great deal more difficult to get your voice heard. However, those clever Greeks and Romans had a way of using the science of acoustics to get their message out. They constructed great amphitheatres which seated thousands. An example of which is the image below I … Read more... Read more »
CHOURMOUZIADOU, K., & KANG, J. (2008) Acoustic evolution of ancient Greek and Roman theatres. Applied Acoustics, 69(6), 514-529. DOI: 10.1016/j.apacoust.2006.12.009
- June 10, 2011
- 03:13 PM
- 1,450 views
Why a quantum particle is not like a water drop. A tale of two slits, part 1
by aatishb in Empirical Zeal
I want to describe a certain beautiful experiment, perhaps the most beautiful experiment in science. This is an experiment that has captivated me from the time that I first heard about it in high school. That’s because it’s simple to understand, and yet it captures the essence of what is truly messed up about quantum mechanics.... Read more »
Richard P. Feynman. (1988) QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton University Press. info:other/978-0691024172
Young, T. (1804) The Bakerian Lecture: Experiments and Calculations Relative to Physical Optics. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1-16. DOI: 10.1098/rstl.1804.0001
- June 7, 2011
- 10:58 AM
- 1,342 views
Commanding the Power of Thor...ium: "Wigner Crystals of 229Th for Optical Excitation of the Nuclear Isomer"
by Chad Orzel in Uncertain Principles
I have to admit, I'm writing this one up partly because it lets me use the title reference. It's a cool little paper, though, demonstrating the lengths that physicists will go to in pursuit of precision measurements.
I'm just going to pretend I didn't see that dorky post title, and ask what this is about. Well, it's about the trapping and laser cooling of thorium ions. They managed to load thorium ions into an ion trap, and use lasers to lower their temperature into the millikelvin range. At su........ Read more »
C. J. Campbell, A. G. Radnaev, & A. Kuzmich. (2011) Wigner Crystals of 229Th for Optical Excitation of the Nuclear Isomer. Physical Review Letters, 223001. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.223001
- June 3, 2011
- 07:22 PM
- 7,268 views
Treating the Bends
by James Byrne in Disease Prone
ResearchBlogging.org
Last week I wrote about the Bends, a medical problem based in an understanding of physics that results in bubbles of (primarily) nitrogen in your blood if you move from one atmospheric pressure to another to quickly, typically surfacing from depth while diving too fast.
The therapy is actually very simple – take the person back to the depth they were diving at to force the bubbles to resolve into the blood. This immediately solves of the symptoms of the condition but........ Read more »
Vann RD, Butler FK, Mitchell SJ, & Moon RE. (2011) Decompression illness. Lancet, 377(9760), 153-64. PMID: 21215883
Acott, CJ. (1999) Oxygen toxicity: A brief history of oxygen in diving. South Pacific Underwater Medicine Society Journal. info:/
Clark JM. (1974) The toxicity of oxygen. The American review of respiratory disease, 110(6 Pt 2), 40-50. PMID: 4613232
- June 3, 2011
- 10:37 AM
- 1,369 views
Watching Photons Interfere: "Observing the Average Trajectories of Single Photons in a Two-Slit Interferometer"
by Chad Orzel in Uncertain Principles
An explanation of a Science paper on using weak measurements to trace the average trajectories of photons in a double-slit interference experiment.... Read more »
Sacha Kocsis, Boris Braverman, Sylvain Ravets, Martin J. Stevens, Richard P. Mirin, L. Krister Shalm, & Aephraim M. Steinberg. (2011) Observing the Average Trajectories of Single Photons in a Two-Slit Interferometer. Science, 332(6034), 1179-1173. info:/10.1126/science.1202218
- June 2, 2011
- 04:21 AM
- 682 views
The Holographic Brain
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
According to the holonomic brain theory,Cognitive function is guided by a matrix of neurological wave interference patterns situated temporally between holographic Gestalt perception and discrete, affective, quantum vectors derived from reward anticipation potentials.Well, I don't know about that, but a group of neuroscientists have just reported on using holograms as a tool for studying brain function: Three-dimensional holographic photostimulation of the dendritic arbor.A while ago, scientists........ Read more »
Yang S, Papagiakoumou E, Guillon M, de Sars V, Tang CM, & Emiliani V. (2011) Three-dimensional holographic photostimulation of the dendritic arbor. Journal of neural engineering, 8(4), 46002. PMID: 21623008
- June 1, 2011
- 05:38 AM
- 928 views
CDF bump at 4.8 sigma!
by Marco Frasca in The Gauge Connection
In these days I am exceeding with exclamation marks but let me say that there are sound reasons for this. I will keep on staying on a prudence line as my more renowned colleagues are doing but there is a talk by Giovanni Punzi, the spokesman of CDF Collaboration at Tevatron, (see here), presenting the [...]... Read more »
Kingman Cheung, & Jeonghyeon Song. (2011) Baryonic Z' Explanation for the CDF Wjj Excess. arXiv. arXiv: 1104.1375v3
- June 1, 2011
- 12:29 AM
- 1,022 views
Mpemba’s baffling discovery: can hot water freeze before cold? (1969)
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
“My name is Erasto B Mpemba, and I am going to tell you about my discovery, which was due to misusing a refrigerator.” With those words, Tanzanian student Erasto Mpemba entered scientific history, and also sparked a scientific mystery and … Continue reading →... Read more »
E.B. Mpemba, & D.G. Osborne. (1969) Cool?. Physics Education, 172-175. info:/
- May 30, 2011
- 06:09 AM
- 858 views
A critical point in QCD exists indeed!
by Marco Frasca in The Gauge Connection
After my comeback from the conference in Ghent (see here, here and here), I started a collaboration with Marco Ruggieri. Marco was instrumental in making me aware of that part of the community that does computations in QCD at finite temperature. The aim of these people is to get a full landscape of the ground [...]... Read more »
Z. Fodor, & S. D. Katz. (2004) Critical point of QCD at finite T and \mu, lattice results for physical quark masses. JHEP 0404 (2004) 050. arXiv: hep-lat/0402006v1
Marco Frasca. (2011) Chiral symmetry in the low-energy limit of QCD at finite temperature. arXiv. arXiv: 1105.5274v2
T. Hell, S. Roessner, M. Cristoforetti, & W. Weise. (2008) Dynamics and thermodynamics of a nonlocal Polyakov--Nambu--Jona-Lasinio model with running coupling. Phys.Rev.D79:014022,2009. arXiv: 0810.1099v2
D. Gomez Dumm, & N. N. Scoccola. (2004) Characteristics of the chiral phase transition in nonlocal quark models. Phys.Rev. C72 (2005) 014909. arXiv: hep-ph/0410262v2
- May 28, 2011
- 09:00 AM
- 1,892 views
Physics Medicine = The Bends
by James Byrne in Disease Prone
Arguably many diseases can be based in physics including heart disease, atherosclerosis and pretty much anything else to do with the pipes in your body but a disease known as ‘the bends’ or ‘decompression sickness’ invokes a bunch of physics laws and principles and then also requires a physics based treatment to deal with it.
... Read more »
Vann RD, Butler FK, Mitchell SJ, & Moon RE. (2011) Decompression illness. Lancet, 377(9760), 153-64. PMID: 21215883
- May 28, 2011
- 12:11 AM
- 1,121 views
Observing Sgr A*
by Olga V. Vovk in Universe at a glance
Our image of Sgr A* is constrained by what we see and what we do not see (the later is even more important).In 1974, two American radio astronomers Bruce Balick and Robert Brown, while conducted the observations of the center of Milky Way, discovered a compact and variable radio source that looked like a faint quasar. Because it appeared to be inside a large, extended radio source already known as Sagittarius A, they named it Sagittarius A* (or Sgr A*). Here I should make ........ Read more »
Bower, G. (2004) Detection of the Intrinsic Size of Sagittarius A* Through Closure Amplitude Imaging. Science, 304(5671), 704-708. DOI: 10.1126/science.1094023
Doeleman, S., Weintroub, J., Rogers, A., Plambeck, R., Freund, R., Tilanus, R., Friberg, P., Ziurys, L., Moran, J., Corey, B.... (2008) Event-horizon-scale structure in the supermassive black hole candidate at the Galactic Centre. Nature, 455(7209), 78-80. DOI: 10.1038/nature07245
F. Yusef-Zadeh, H. Bushouse, C. D. Dowell, M. Wardle, D. Roberts, C. Heinke, G. C. Bower, B. Vila Vilaro, S. Shapiro, A. Goldwurm.... (2005) A Multi-Wavelength Study of Sgr A*: The Role of Near-IR Flares in Production of X-ray, Soft $\gamma$-ray and Sub-millimeter Emission. Astrophys.J.644:198-213,2006. arXiv: astro-ph/0510787v2
- May 27, 2011
- 06:04 PM
- 1,108 views
Water has properties that are positively electrifying!
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
Most people certainly understand how important water is for our survival, but we often overlook how weird it can be. I can compile a short, though not exhaustive, list off the top of my head: Water is less dense in … Continue reading →... Read more »
Sharma M, Resta R, & Car R. (2007) Dipolar correlations and the dielectric permittivity of water. Physical review letters, 98(24), 247401. PMID: 17677991
- May 27, 2011
- 11:02 AM
- 1,385 views
What Goes Around Is Really Round: "Improved measurement of the shape of the electron"
by Chad Orzel in Uncertain Principles
The big physics story of the week is undoubtedly the new limit on the electric dipole moment (EDM) of the electron from Ed Hinds's group at Imperial College in the UK. As this is something I wrote a long article on for Physics World, I'm pretty psyched to see this getting lots of media attention, and not just from physics outlets.
My extremely hectic end-of-term schedule and general laziness almost make me want to just point to my earlier article and have done with it. But really, it's a big st........ Read more »
Hudson, J., Kara, D., Smallman, I., Sauer, B., Tarbutt, M., & Hinds, E. (2011) Improved measurement of the shape of the electron. Nature, 473(7348), 493-496. DOI: 10.1038/nature10104
- May 26, 2011
- 08:25 PM
- 934 views
So Just HOW Do You Measure the Shape of the Electron?
by Ryan K in A Quantum of Knowledge
A paper recently published in Nature is generating quite a bit of media buzz. [PhysOrg, BBC, Fox, PhysicsWorld] The paper is entitled ‘Improved measurement of the shape of the electron’ and describes, well, a new method for measuring the electron’s shape. I love when physics paper titles are easy to understand :) Anywho, the main [...]... Read more »
Hudson, J., Kara, D., Smallman, I., Sauer, B., Tarbutt, M., & Hinds, E. (2011) Improved measurement of the shape of the electron. Nature, 473(7348), 493-496. DOI: 10.1038/nature10104
- May 26, 2011
- 09:10 AM
- 1,028 views
The air is getting thinner for silicon’s competitors
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
Finally I am getting around to blog about the latest generation of transistors that Intel presented earlier this months. These transistors reach feature sizes of only 22 nanometres, down from 32 nm. To give you some perspective what this amazingly high integration means: 4,000 of those 22 nm structures fit across the width of a human [...]... Read more »
Green, J., Wook Choi, J., Boukai, A., Bunimovich, Y., Johnston-Halperin, E., DeIonno, E., Luo, Y., Sheriff, B., Xu, K., Shik Shin, Y.... (2007) A 160-kilobit molecular electronic memory patterned at 1011 bits per square centimetre. Nature, 445(7126), 414-417. DOI: 10.1038/nature05462
Liao, L., Lin, Y., Bao, M., Cheng, R., Bai, J., Liu, Y., Qu, Y., Wang, K., Huang, Y., & Duan, X. (2010) High-speed graphene transistors with a self-aligned nanowire gate. Nature, 467(7313), 305-308. DOI: 10.1038/nature09405
- May 23, 2011
- 06:56 AM
- 1,641 views
Superfast broadband
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
Here in the UK, the fastest broadband download speeds on offer for fibre optic broadband are 40 Mbit per second, which is much better than the 8 Mbit/s or so offered via conventional copper cables. But to those for which 40Mbit/s is not enough, fear not: In a Nature Photonics paper, Juerg Leuthold and colleagues from [...]... Read more »
Hillerkuss, D., Schmogrow, R., Schellinger, T., Jordan, M., Winter, M., Huber, G., Vallaitis, T., Bonk, R., Kleinow, P., Frey, F.... (2011) 26 Tbit s−1 line-rate super-channel transmission utilizing all-optical fast Fourier transform processing. Nature Photonics. DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2011.74
- May 22, 2011
- 03:46 PM
- 1,264 views
Rare Earth Revelry #5: Fission and neutron capture products
by Lab Lemming in Lounge of the Lab Lemming
With interest in the Fukishima reactor disaster decaying at an exponential rate, I thought it would be an opportune time to take the long view of this phenomenon, and consider what sort of isotopic anomalies are left behind billions of years after an uncontained uranium fission reactor. And the best place to find these, of course, is Gabon.Gabon is not known for its nuclear ambitions or ... Read more »
Hidaka, H., & Kikuchi, M. (2010) SHRIMP in situ isotopic analyses of REE, Pb and U in micro-minerals bearing fission products in the Oklo and Bangombé natural reactors: A review of a natural analogue study for the migration of fission products. Precambrian Research, 183(1), 158-165. DOI: 10.1016/j.precamres.2010.07.012
- May 21, 2011
- 06:10 PM
- 944 views
Limitations of Rosetta for Biomacromolecular Structural Modeling
by Michael Long in Phased
Rosetta needs to be optimized for atomic-scale resolution if it is to reach its maximum potential for predicting the three-dimensional shape of proteins and nucleic acids.... Read more »
Das, R. (2011) Four Small Puzzles That Rosetta Doesn't Solve. PLoS ONE, 6(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0020044
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