Earth

Thanks to collaborative work between scientists in Donostia-San Sebastian and the University of Kiel (Germany) it has been shown that it is possible to determine and control the number of atoms in contact between a molecule and a metal electrode of copper, at the same time as the electric current passing through the union being recorded. These results were published in the Nature Nanotechnology journal.

Washington, D.C. (November 30, 2010) -- Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is one of the best tools for gaining insight into the structure and dynamics of molecules because nuclei in atoms within molecules will behave differently in a variety of chemical environments. Nuclei can be thought of as tiny compasses that align when placed in the field of a strong magnet. Similar to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), conventional NMR uses short pulses of radio waves to drive nuclei away from equilibrium and a 'signal' emerges as nuclei slowly realign with the field.

Washington, D.C. (November 30, 2010) -- One of the holy grails of nanotechnology in medicine is to control individual structures and processes inside a cell. Nanoparticles are well suited for this purpose because of their small size; they can also be engineered for specific intracellular tasks. When nanoparticles are excited by radio-frequency (RF) electromagnetic fields, interesting effects may occur. For example, the cell nucleus could get damaged inducing cell death; DNA might melt; or protein aggregates might get dispersed.

Washington, D.C. (November 30, 2010) -- Quantum information processing is arguably one of the most fascinating facets of modern quantum physics.

A quantum computer operates with quantum bits (qubits) as units of information. Obeying the laws of quantum mechanics, such a computer would be capable of addressing several of the most difficult computational tasks unsolvable with present technology. In the past few decades, scientists learned to perform room-sized experiments to optically control and read out a small number of qubits.

TEMPE, Ariz. – Glass is something we all know about. It's what we sip our drinks from, what we look out of to see what the weather is like before going outside and it is the backbone to our high speed communications infrastructure (optical fibers).

Media coverage on HIV/AIDS has fallen by more than 70% in developed countries over the last 20 years, according to an international team of researchers.

While in the early 1990s, an average of 1.5 articles linked to HIV/AIDS could be found in every issue of the main broadsheet newspapers, levels of coverage have dropped to below 0.5 articles per newspaper issue since 2008. Coverage in French and US-based newspapers has decreased particularly dramatically during this period.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Scientists can use cylinders as small as teapots to study the mechanisms involved in powerful hurricanes and other swirling natural phenomena.

The mystery of how an abundance of fossils have been marvellously preserved for nearly half a billion years in a remote region of Africa has been solved by a team of geologists from the University of Leicester's Department of Geology.

They have established that an ancient wind brought life to the region – and was then instrumental in the preservation of the dead.

An international team of researchers has succeeded in creating artificial spin ice in a state of thermal equilibrium for the first time, allowing them to examine the precise configuration of this important nanomaterial.

Geneva, 26 November 2010. After less than three weeks of heavy-ion running, the three experiments studying lead ion collisions at the LHC have already brought new insight into matter as it would have existed in the very first instants of the Universe's life. The ALICE experiment, which is optimised for the study of heavy ions, published two papers just a few days after the start of lead-ion running. Now, the first direct observation of a phenomenon known as jet quenching has been made by both the ATLAS and CMS collaborations.

New research highlighting coastal locations where coral can better withstand rising sea temperatures, a leading cause of stress to coral reefs, may guide efforts to conserve the largest living structures on Earth.

The findings hold promise for an estimated 100 million people living along the coasts of tropical developing countries whose livelihoods and welfare depend directly on coral reefs, but are currently under threat from climate change.

Physicists at the University of British Columbia and TRIUMF have proposed a unified explanation for dark matter and the so-called baryon asymmetry--the apparent imbalance of matter with positive baryon charge and antimatter with negative baryon charge in the Universe.

The visible Universe appears to be made of atoms, and each of these atoms carries a positive baryon charge equal to total number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus.