Monday, March 26, 2012

PhysOrg Newsletter Week 12

Dear Reader ,

Here is your customized PHYSorg.com Newsletter for week 12:

Nuclear fusion simulation shows high-gain energy output
(PhysOrg.com) -- High-gain nuclear fusion could be achieved in a preheated cylindrical container immersed in strong magnetic fields, according to a series of computer simulations performed at Sandia National Laboratories.

New technique lights up the creation of holograms
Researchers at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute (Japan) have developed a unique way to create full-color holograms with the aid of surface plasmons.

Mysterious objects at the edge of the electromagnetic spectrum
The human eye is crucial to astronomy. Without the ability to see, the luminous universe of stars, planets and galaxies would be closed to us, unknown forever. Nevertheless, astronomers cannot shake their fascination with the invisible.

NIF facility fires record laser shot into target chamber
(PhysOrg.com) -- The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California has set a new record for a laser shot. This past week, its combined 192 lasers fired a single 1.875-megajoule shot into an empty test chamber. After passing through the last of its focusing lens, the shot reached 2.03 megajoules, making it the first 2 megajoule ultraviolet laser.

Jupiter's melting heart sheds light on mysterious exoplanet
Scientists now have evidence that Jupiter's core has been dissolving, and the implications stretch far outside of our solar system.

2001-2010 warmest decade on record: WMO
Climate change has accelerated in the past decade, the UN weather agency said Friday, releasing data showing that 2001 to 2010 was the warmest decade on record.

Global sea level likely to rise as much as 70 feet for future generations
Even if humankind manages to limit global warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends, future generations will have to deal with sea levels 12 to 22 meters (40 to 70 feet) higher than at present, according to research published in the journal Geology.

Researchers revolutionize closed captioning
(PhysOrg.com) -- Ever since closed video captioning was developed in the 1970s, it hasn't changed much. The words spoken by the characters or narrators scroll along at the bottom of the screen, enabling hearing impaired viewers - or all viewers when the sound is off - to follow along. Now a team of researchers from China and Singapore has developed a new closed captioning approach in which the text appears in translucent talk bubbles next to the speaker. The new approach offers several advantages for improving the viewing experience for the more than 66 million people around the world who have hearing impairments.

Materials inspired by Mother Nature: A 1-pound boat that could float 1,000 pounds
Combining the secrets that enable water striders to walk on water and give wood its lightness and great strength has yielded an amazing new material so buoyant that, in everyday terms, a boat made from 1 pound of the substance could carry five kitchen refrigerators, about 1,000 pounds.

New technique lets scientists peer within nanoparticles, see atomic structure in 3-D
(PhysOrg.com) -- UCLA researchers are now able to peer deep within the world's tiniest structures to create three-dimensional images of individual atoms and their positions. Their research, published March 22 in the journal Nature, presents a new method for directly measuring the atomic structure of nanomaterials.

Detection of cosmic effect may bring universe's formation into sharper focus
(PhysOrg.com) -- The first observation of a cosmic effect theorized 40 years ago could provide astronomers with a more precise tool for understanding the forces behind the universe's formation and growth, including the enigmatic phenomena of dark energy and dark matter.

Astronomers put forward new theory on size of black holes
(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have put forward a new theory about why black holes become so hugely massive – claiming some of them have no 'table manners', and tip their 'food' directly into their mouths, eating more than one course simultaneously.

Magnetic field researchers target Hundred-Tesla goal
(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s biggest magnet facility today met the grand challenge of producing magnetic fields in excess of 100 tesla while conducting six different experiments. The hundred-tesla level is roughly equivalent to 2 million times Earth’s magnetic field.

Self-reflective mind: Psychologists report on continuing advances in animals
(PhysOrg.com) -- According to one of the leading scholars in the field, there is an emerging consensus among scientists that animals share functional parallels with humans' conscious metacognition -- that is, our ability to reflect on our own mental processes and guide and optimize them.

Conservatism saved Iceland from catastrophe
The people of medieval Iceland survived disaster by sticking with traditional practices, an innovative new study suggests.

Runaway planets zoom at a fraction of light speed
Seven years ago, astronomers boggled when they found the first runaway star flying out of our Galaxy at a speed of 1.5 million miles per hour. The discovery intrigued theorists, who wondered: If a star can get tossed outward at such an extreme velocity, could the same thing happen to planets?

Flexible, paper-based supercapacitor could improve performance of hybrid electric vehicles
(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists know that using supercapacitors in conjunction with batteries could greatly increase the fuel economy of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) due to the fact that supercapacitors can recover and supply energy much more quickly than batteries. This ability, for example, allows a supercapacitor to recover all of the energy during hard braking, while a battery would allow the energy to be wasted in frictional braking due to its inability to quickly harvest energy.

Researchers show that memories reside in specific brain cells
Our fond or fearful memories — that first kiss or a bump in the night — leave memory traces that we may conjure up in the remembrance of things past, complete with time, place and all the sensations of the experience. Neuroscientists call these traces memory engrams.

Physicists demonstrate quantum plasmons in atomic-scale nanoparticles
Addressing a half-century-old question, engineers at Stanford have conclusively determined how collective electron oscillations, called plasmons, behave in individual metal particles as small as just a few nanometers in diameter. This knowledge may open up new avenues in nanotechnology ranging from solar catalysis to biomedical therapeutics.

Study reveals why our ancestors switched to bipedal power
(PhysOrg.com) -- Our earliest ancestors may have started walking on two limbs instead of four in a bid to monopolise resources and to carry as much food as possible in one go, researchers have found.


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