Physics posts
- May 17, 2011
- 11:45 PM
- 881 views
Force-Enhanced, Non-Covalent Cell-Cell Binding
by Michael Long in Phased
A bacterial appendage has evolved to bind to epithelial cells much more strongly with increasing mechanical force.... Read more »
Aprikian, P., Interlandi, G., Kidd, B. A., Le Trong, I., Tchesnokova, V., Yakovenko, O., Whitfield, M. J., Bullitt, E., Stenkamp, R. E., Thomas, W. E.... (2011) The Bacterial Fimbrial Tip Acts as a Mechanical Force Sensor. PLoS Biology, 9(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000617
- May 16, 2011
- 05:10 PM
- 1,107 views
Cheap and Easy Isolation of Single-Chirality Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes
by Michael Long in Phased
Gel chromatography is used to purify a valuable nanotechnology material.... Read more »
Liu, H., Nishide, D., Tanaka, T., & Kataura, H. (2011) Large-scale single-chirality separation of single-wall carbon nanotubes by simple gel chromatography. Nature Communications, 309. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1313
- May 16, 2011
- 11:31 AM
- 1,250 views
Active Engagement Works: "Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics Class"
by Chad Orzel in Uncertain Principles
Physics is a notoriously difficult and unpopular subject, which is probably why there is a large and active Physics Education Research community within physics departments in the US. This normally generates a lot of material in the Physical Review Special Topics journal, but last week, a PER paper appeared in Science, which is unusual enough to deserve the ResearchBlogging treatment.
OK, what's this paper about? Well, with the exceptional originality that physicists bring to all things, the tit........ Read more »
Deslauriers, L., Schelew, E., & Wieman, C. (2011) Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics Class. Science, 332(6031), 862-864. DOI: 10.1126/science.1201783
- May 16, 2011
- 09:15 AM
- 1,466 views
cyclical cosmology debate keeps on cycling…
by Greg Fish in weird things
Since we last discussed the universe according to Roger Penrose, I thought the physics community wasn’t going to dedicate more time to the theory of cyclical cosmology, but apparently, I was wrong. It seems that the theory still lives and is being debated by scientists trying to figure out whether the concentric circles that could [...]... Read more »
Moss, A., Scott, D., & Zibin, J. (2011) No evidence for anomalously low variance circles on the sky. Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2011(04), 33-33. DOI: 10.1088/1475-7516/2011/04/033
- May 15, 2011
- 01:24 PM
- 1,799 views
Sensors in the focus
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
Sensing the presence of molecules in gases and liquids is a billion dollar business. Just think about all the carbon monoxide detectors in private homes, or blood glucose sensors. In particular for many technical and scientific applications, ultrasmall and precise sensors are desired. This includes sensors to measure gases in catalytic nanoreactors and fuel cells, [...]... Read more »
Liu, N., Tang, M., Hentschel, M., Giessen, H., & Alivisatos, A. (2011) Nanoantenna-enhanced gas sensing in a single tailored nanofocus. Nature Materials. DOI: 10.1038/nmat3029
- May 13, 2011
- 08:30 AM
- 1,053 views
Splitting Water - Part II
by Paul Vallett in Electron Cafe
In my previous post about water splitting, I talked about how to split water into hydrogen and how it can be useful. The drawback of course was that to make hydrogen from water, you need to input energy. If you’re just using electricity, and that electricity was produced from burning coal or natural gas, then the hydrogen you produce isn’t really any “greener”. However, if one could use sunlight directly to produce hydrogen, then you have a fuel that can be stored and use........ Read more »
FUJISHIMA, A., & HONDA, K. (1972) Electrochemical Photolysis of Water at a Semiconductor Electrode. Nature, 238(5358), 37-38. DOI: 10.1038/238037a0
Khaselev O, & Turner JA. (1998) A monolithic photovoltaic-photoelectrochemical device for hydrogen production via water splitting. Science (New York, N.Y.), 280(5362), 425-7. PMID: 9545218
Kanan, M., & Nocera, D. (2008) In Situ Formation of an Oxygen-Evolving Catalyst in Neutral Water Containing Phosphate and Co2 . Science, 321(5892), 1072-1075. DOI: 10.1126/science.1162018
Lutterman, D., Surendranath, Y., & Nocera, D. (2009) A Self-Healing Oxygen-Evolving Catalyst. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 131(11), 3838-3839. DOI: 10.1021/ja900023k
- May 12, 2011
- 11:43 AM
- 1,051 views
It’s not shrinkage — it’s relativity! (1889)
by gg in Skulls in the Stars
The best stories in the history of physics are those in which someone comes from humble origins and, seemingly out of nowhere, makes a brilliant discovery that changes everything. Such stories, however, can give a very misleading impression of the … Continue reading →... Read more »
G. FitzGerald. (1889) The Ether and the Earth's Atmosphere. Science (New York, N.Y.), 13(328), 390. PMID: 17819387
- May 11, 2011
- 11:41 PM
- 980 views
Modern Day Alchemy: Turning Silver to Gold
by Paige Brown in From The Lab Bench
The Xia lab group members at Washington University in St. Louis are modern day alchemists, daily converting very small cubes of silver into hollow, porous boxes of gold, termed gold nanocages. Beyond conquering the age-old quest to turn base metals into precious gold, these scientists are going a step further, using gold nanocages as 'magic bullets' in the war against cancer.... Read more »
Xia Y, Li W, Cobley CM, Chen J, Xia X, Zhang Q, Yang M, Cho EC, & Brown PK. (2011) Gold Nanocages: From Synthesis to Theranostic Applications. Accounts of chemical research. PMID: 21528889
Cobley, C., Au, L., Chen, J., & Xia, Y. (2010) Targeting gold nanocages to cancer cells for photothermal destruction and drug delivery. Expert Opinion on Drug Delivery, 7(5), 577-587. DOI: 10.1517/17425240903571614
Chen J, Glaus C, Laforest R, Zhang Q, Yang M, Gidding M, Welch MJ, & Xia Y. (2010) Gold nanocages as photothermal transducers for cancer treatment. Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany), 6(7), 811-7. PMID: 20225187
- May 9, 2011
- 10:00 AM
- 1,324 views
A phase map analysis algorithm for numerical correction of fields with an optical vortex
by nath in Imprints of Philippine Science
The position of an optical vortex has been determined with precision with their new algorithm. By knowing the position, they were able to correct the distortion of the phase caused by this vortex.... Read more »
Maallo, A., & Almoro, P. (2011) Numerical correction of optical vortex using a wrapped phase map analysis algorithm. Optics Letters, 36(7), 1251. DOI: 10.1364/OL.36.001251
Roux, F. (1995) Dynamical behavior of optical vortices. Journal of the Optical Society of America B, 12(7), 1215. DOI: 10.1364/JOSAB.12.001215
- May 7, 2011
- 04:14 PM
- 1,510 views
Rise of the Rat Brained Robots
by Neurobonkers in Neurobonkers
Kevin Warwick and his team at Reading University have successfully created a robot controlled directly by a rat's brain.... Read more »
Warwick, K., Xydas, D., Nasuto, S. J., Becerra, V. M., Hammond, M. W., Downes, J., Marshall, S., & Whalley, B . Defence Science, 60. (2010) Controlling a mobile robot with a biological brain. Defence Science, 60(1), 5-14. info:/
- May 5, 2011
- 09:56 PM
- 1,138 views
Saggitarius A*: distance and mass estimates
by Olga V. Vovk in Universe at a glance
Center of Milky Way. Credit: Stefan Gillessen, Reinhard Genzel, Frank EisenhauerKnowing distance to Sgr A* (Ro) is very important, because it sets the distance scale for every other distance within Milky Way. The total Galaxy's mass, the Sun's orbital velocity, and luminosities of distant stars rely upon the accurate measurement of Ro.A variety of methods have been employed by astronomers to determine Ro. These can be separated into three broad categories: 1. The Shapley m........ Read more »
Gillessen, S., Eisenhauer, F., Trippe, S., Alexander, T., Genzel, R., Martins, F., & Ott, T. (2009) MONITORING STELLAR ORBITS AROUND THE MASSIVE BLACK HOLE IN THE GALACTIC CENTER. The Astrophysical Journal, 692(2), 1075-1109. DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/692/2/1075
F. Eisenhauer, R. Genzel, T. Alexander, R. Abuter, T. Paumard, T. Ott, A. Gilbert, S. Gillessen, M. Horrobin, S. Trippe.... (2005) SINFONI in the Galactic Center: young stars and IR flares in the central light month. Astrophys.J. 628 (2005) 246-259. arXiv: astro-ph/0502129v1
- May 5, 2011
- 10:25 AM
- 1,632 views
finding aliens by the black holes they make?
by Greg Fish in weird things
As the world keeps moving forward, our energy requirements are constantly increasing. Our cities and towns are consuming terawatt after terawatt, and as new technology comes online and old technology improves, the rate of consumption only grows. Surely, an incredibly advanced alien civilization that had a fairly sophisticated infrastructure for the last few million years [...]... Read more »
Clement Vidal. (2011) Black Holes: Attractors for Intelligence?. n/a. arXiv: 1104.4362v1
- May 4, 2011
- 05:59 PM
- 999 views
CERN Traps Anti-Matter For 1000 Seconds
by Ryan K in A Quantum of Knowledge
Antimatter is cool. It lets us perform PET scans and powers the starship Enterprise. But it is extremely difficult to study. That is because when anti-matter comes into contact with normal matter, they annihilate one another, emitting pure energy (photons). This is unfortunate for scientists because they would love to study anti-matter, but developing a [...]... Read more »
ALPHA Collaboration, G. B. Andresen, M. D. Ashkezari, M. Baquero-Ruiz, W. Bertsche, E. Butler, C. L. Cesar, A. Deller, S. Eriksson, J. Fajans.... (2011) Confinement of antihydrogen for 1000 seconds. arXiv. arXiv: 1104.4982v1
- May 3, 2011
- 02:20 PM
- 636 views
Early stars
by Olga V. Vovk in Universe at a glance
The first generation of stars that formed right after the Big Bang were probably massive luminous stars made of hydrogen and very little helium, they lived short lives (about 30 million years) and after they deaths they provided the Universe with the first heavy (in astronomical terms) elements. It was long thought that these stars lived mostly solitary lives, or formed a very wide binary system. The modern studies suggest that these stars were not only very massive, but........ Read more »
Clark, P., Glover, S., Smith, R., Greif, T., Klessen, R., & Bromm, V. (2011) The Formation and Fragmentation of Disks Around Primordial Protostars. Science, 331(6020), 1040-1042. DOI: 10.1126/science.1198027
Chiappini, C., Frischknecht, U., Meynet, G., Hirschi, R., Barbuy, B., Pignatari, M., Decressin, T., & Maeder, A. (2011) Imprints of fast-rotating massive stars in the Galactic Bulge. Nature, 472(7344), 454-457. DOI: 10.1038/nature10000
- May 3, 2011
- 08:28 AM
- 1,325 views
What the Higgs is going on? The idiot’s ludicrously simple guide to what the ‘God Particle’ is… (and in under 4 minutes)
by Stuart Farrimond in Dr Stu's Science Blog
Does science make you queasy? Thinking about physics tends to make me feel rather seasick. If you’ve ever tried to imagine how big infinity is then you’ll probably know what I mean. News agencies have been buzzing with reports that the discovery of the fabled ‘God particle’ is close at hand. But who really knows … Continue reading »... Read more »
Miller, S. (2001) Public understanding of science at the crossroads. Public Understanding of Science, 10(1), 115-120. DOI: 10.1088/0963-6625/10/1/308
David E Rowe. (2006) Einstein's Allies and Enemies: Debating Relativity in Germany, 1916–1920. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 231-280. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4020-5195-1_8
- May 3, 2011
- 06:25 AM
- 490 views
Today in arXiv (2)
by Marco Frasca in The Gauge Connection
Today I have found some papers in the arXiv daily that makes worthwhile to talk about. The contribution by Attilio Cucchieri and Tereza Mendes at Ghent Conference “The many faces of QCD” is out (see here). They study the gluon propagator in the Landau gauge at finite temperature at a significantly large lattice. The theory [...]... Read more »
Attilio Cucchieri, & Tereza Mendes. (2011) Electric and magnetic Landau-gauge gluon propagators in finite-temperature SU(2) gauge theory. arXiv. arXiv: 1105.0176v1
Nuno Cardoso, Marco Cardoso, & Pedro Bicudo. (2011) Finite temperature lattice QCD with GPUs. arXiv. arXiv: 1104.5432v1
Pedro Bicudo, Nuno Cardoso, & Marco Cardoso. (2011) The chiral crossover, static-light and light-light meson spectra, and the deconfinement crossover. arXiv. arXiv: 1105.0063v1
Arata Yamamoto. (2011) Chiral magnetic effect in lattice QCD with chiral chemical potential. arXiv. arXiv: 1105.0385v1
Fukushima, K., Ruggieri, M., & Gatto, R. (2010) Chiral magnetic effect in the Polyakov–Nambu–Jona-Lasinio model. Physical Review D, 81(11). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.81.114031
Fukushima, K., & Ruggieri, M. (2010) Dielectric correction to the chiral magnetic effect. Physical Review D, 82(5). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.82.054001
- May 2, 2011
- 10:55 AM
- 1,391 views
Proving Einstein Wrong...ish: Measurement of the Instantaneous Velocity of a Brownian Particle
by Chad Orzel in Uncertain Principles
Last summer, there was a fair bit of hype about a paper from Mark Raizen's group at Texas which was mostly reported with an "Einstein proven wrong" slant, probably due to this press release. While it is technically true that they measured something Einstein said would be impossible to measure, that framing is a little unfair to Einstein. It does draw media attention, though...
The experiment in question involves Brownian motion, and since I had to read up on that anyway for something else, I th........ Read more »
Li, T., Kheifets, S., Medellin, D., & Raizen, M. (2010) Measurement of the Instantaneous Velocity of a Brownian Particle. Science, 328(5986), 1673-1675. DOI: 10.1126/science.1189403
- April 29, 2011
- 05:09 PM
- 669 views
FULL OR EMPTY BEER: WHICH IS THE BEST WEAPON?
by Casey Rentz in Natural Selections
It's likely that if I ever witness a barroom brawl that culminates in someone's head getting smashed with a beer bottle, I'm drunk too, and the gravity of the situation is lost to the spectacle of it all. But, if i was a sober witness to the climactic crack, after everyone was deemed safe I might wonder, "Was the beer full or empty? Would it matter?" I'm just a curious person, you know.
Actually, I got the idea from researchers in Bern, Switzerland who decided to test it, applying a scient........ Read more »
Bolliger, S., Ross, S., Oesterhelweg, L., Thali, M., & Kneubuehl, B. (2009) Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 16(3), 138-142. DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2008.07.013
- April 29, 2011
- 12:41 PM
- 1,126 views
Semiconductor optical switches reach the speed of light
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
Fibre optic cables transmit information so fast because they can make use of the unique properties of light and transmit many data channels at the same time. The digital 1s and 0s the light beams carry are imprinted onto the beams by semiconductors that in quick succession turn the light beam on and off. Unfortunately, that also puts [...]... Read more »
Ctistis, G., Yuce, E., Hartsuiker, A., Claudon, J., Bazin, M., Gérard, J., & Vos, W. (2011) Ultimate fast optical switching of a planar microcavity in the telecom wavelength range. Applied Physics Letters, 98(16), 161114. DOI: 10.1063/1.3580615
- April 27, 2011
- 08:51 AM
- 1,190 views
Beer Bottle Full or Empty: Which is Best as a Weapon?
by Ben Good in B Good Science
It’s a question that I am sure many of you have asked yourself. If that angry looking person over there decided to hit me over the head with a bottle, would it be better if it were finished or full? Well thankfully a research paper has the answer and contains my ‘Research Quote of the … Read more... Read more »
Bolliger, S., Ross, S., Oesterhelweg, L., Thali, M., & Kneubuehl, B. (2009) Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 16(3), 138-142. DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2008.07.013
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