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Here is your customized Phys.org Newsletter for week 28:
Getting amped: Researchers develop instrument for exploring the cosmos and the quantum world
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have developed a new type of amplifier for boosting electrical signals. The device can be used for everything from studying stars, galaxies, and black holes to exploring the quantum world and developing quantum computers.
NIF makes history with record 500 terawatt laser shot
(Phys.org) -- Fifteen years of work by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF) team paid off on July 5 with a historic record-breaking laser shot. The NIF laser system of 192 beams delivered more than 500 trillion watts (terawatts or TW) of peak power and 1.85 megajoules (MJ) of ultraviolet laser light to its target. Five hundred terawatts is 1,000 times more power than the United States uses at any instant in time, and 1.85 megajoules of energy is about 100 times what any other laser regularly produces today.
Scientists place 500-million-year-old gene in modern organism
It's a project 500 million years in the making. Only this time, instead of playing on a movie screen in Jurassic Park, it's happening in a lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Physics team proposes a way to create an actual space-time crystal
(Phys.org) -- Earlier this year, theoretical physicists Frank Wilczek, of MIT put forth an idea that intrigued the research community. He suggested that it should be possible to construct a so called space-time crystal by adding a fourth dimension, movement in time, to the structure of a crystal, causing it to become an infinitely running clock of sorts. At the time, Wilczek acknowledged that his ideas on how to do so were inelegant, to say the least. Now another international team led by Tongcang Li has proposed a way to achieve what Wilczek proposed using a far more elegant process. They have posted a paper on the preprint server arXiv describing what they believe is a real-world process for creating an actual space-time crystal that could conceivably be carried out in just the next few years.
Classical problem becomes undecidable in a quantum setting
(Phys.org) -- As a testament to how differently things work in the quantum and classical regimes, physicists have found that a problem that is easily solved in a classical context cannot be solved at all in a quantum context. The physicists think that the same situation applies to many other similar problems, which could have implications for quantum computing applications and quantum many-body models, which describe microscopic systems.
Hubble Space Telescope detects fifth moon of Pluto (Update)
(Phys.org) -- Nearly one year ago, Pluto made headlines as the discovery of a fourth moon (shown above), dubbed "P4" was announced by a team which included Alan Stern, Principal Investigator for the New Horizons mission enroute to Pluto. Today, via twitter, Alan Stern has announced the discovery of a fifth moon by the Hubble Space Telescope: "Just announced: Pluto has some company-- We've discovered a 5th moon using the Hubble Space Telescope!"
Scientists move closer to new kind of thermoelectric 'heat engine'
Researchers who are studying a new magnetic effect that converts heat to electricity have discovered how to amplify it a thousand times over - a first step in making the technology more practical.
Synchrotrons help bring superconductors out of the cold
(Phys.org) -- The longstanding search for a room temperature superconductor is fueled by a tantalizing set of possible applications that sound like science fiction: infinitely long power lines that never lose energy, magnetically levitating trains, and incredibly fast quantum computers.
'Molecular grenade': Drug from Mediterranean weed kills tumor cells in mice
Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, working with Danish researchers, have developed a novel anticancer drug designed to travel -- undetected by normal cells -- through the bloodstream until activated by specific cancer proteins. The drug, made from a weedlike plant, has been shown to destroy cancers and their direct blood supplies, acting like a "molecular grenade," and sparing healthy blood vessels and tissues.
Entanglement study makes a quantum leap
Some scientists have likened it to voodoo, while Albert Einstein called it just plain "spooky." In the bizarre realm of quantum mechanics, entanglement is the phenomenon in which two seemingly distinct particles control each other in ways that defy common physical sense. For instance, when an atom located in Beijing is measured by an observer, it will exhibit the exact opposite qualities of its entangled counterpart in Boston.
Researcher on cloud nine over universe discovery
(Phys.org) -- The mysteries of the evolution of the universe since the Big Bang are one step closer to being solved, thanks to research from The Australian National University.
Million-year storage solution is set in stone
(Phys.org) -- A sapphire hard disk can last one million years and resolve a problem worrying archaeologists. Thursday, Patrick Charton of the French nuclear waste management agency ANDRA, presented a way out of data storage problems, an information-engraved sapphire disk using platinum. The disk is being called the ultimate, if not ultimately unaffordable, HDD. The disk was announced at this week’s Euroscience Open Forum, a pan-European event drawing researchers, as a way to provide information for future archaeologists.
'Spintronic' LED invented: New technology promises brighter TV, computer displays
University of Utah physicists invented a new "spintronic" organic light-emitting diode or OLED that promises to be brighter, cheaper and more environmentally friendly than the kinds of LEDs now used in television and computer displays, lighting, traffic lights and numerous electronic devices.
Toward achieving one million times increase in computing efficiency
Modern-day computers are based on logic circuits using semiconductor transistors. To increase computing power, smaller transistors are required. Moore's Law states that the number of transistors that can fit on an integrated circuit should double every two years due to scaling. But as transistors reach atomic dimensions, achieving this feat is becoming increasingly difficult. Among the most significant challenges is heat dissipation from circuits created using today's standard semiconductor technology, complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS), which give off more heat as more transistors are added. This makes CMOS incapable of supporting the computers of the future.
Geoscientists discover trigger for past rapid sea level rise
The cause of rapid sea level rise in the past has been found by scientists at the University of Bristol using climate and ice sheet models.
Computer turns into boardgame master of all it surveys
(Phys.org) -- Igniting interest in computer logic and gaming, a paper titled “Learning Games from Videos Guided by Descriptive Complexity” shows how computer systems can successfully learn how to play boardgames, just by its watching two-minute videos of humans playing and can then proceed to try to beat them at their own game. Łukasz Kaiser, the author of the paper, studies logic and games at Paris Diderot University in France. His research effort was to introduce a system for learning board game rules from brief videos and demonstrate it on several well-known games—such as Connect4,Gomoku, Pawns, and Breakthrough.
Finland team uses Earth's magnetic field for phone indoor positioning system
(Phys.org) -- Finland-based engineers have worked up a novel approach toward an indoor positioning system (IPS) inspired by the way certain animals--from homing pigeons to spiny lobsters--navigate their way with the help of cues that arise from local anomalies of the earth’s magnetic field. The researchers have formed a company with seed capital investment to commercialize their approach. Namely that approach has resulted in a smartphone app that uses magnetic fluctuations to map indoor locations. Aptly named IndoorAtlas, the company is a spinoff from their University of Oulu beginnings.
Native American populations descend from three key migrations
Scientists have found that Native American populations — from Canada to the southern tip of Chile — arose from at least three migrations, with the majority descended entirely from a single group of First American migrants that crossed over through Beringia, a land bridge between Asia and America that existed during the ice ages, more than 15,000 years ago.
Back-to-back La Ninas cooled globe and influenced extreme weather in 2011
(Phys.org) -- Worldwide, 2011 was the coolest year on record since 2008, yet temperatures remained above the 30 year average, according to the 2011 State of the Climate report released online today by NOAA. The peer-reviewed report, issued in coordination with the American Meteorological Society (AMS), was compiled by 378 scientists from 48 countries around the world. It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments on land, sea, ice and sky.
New silk technology stabilizes vaccine and antibiotics so refrigeration is not needed
Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have developed a new silk-based stabilizer that, in the laboratory, kept some vaccines and antibiotics stable up to temperatures of 140 degrees Fahrenheit. This provides a new avenue toward eliminating the need to keep some vaccines and antibiotics refrigerated, which could save billions of dollars every year and increase accessibility to third world populations.
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