Latest science news in Physics & Chemistry
New material harvests energy from water vapor
MIT engineers have created a new polymer film that can generate electricity by drawing on a ubiquitous source: water vapor. [...]
Spinning Superior Nanotube Fibers
Nanotechnology: Carbon-based threads possess remarkable strength and conductivity
Tiny machine apes production line
Manchester scientists develop a tiny molecular machine they hope one day could synthesize new drug molecules or new types of plastic.
The Earth's Core: Now With More Oxygen
The Earth's core formed under more oxidizing condition's than previously believed, researchers have discovered through of series of laser-heated diamond anvil cell experiments at high pressure - 350,000 to 700,000...
New professor for SEAS, Wyss
Jennifer A. Lewis, an internationally recognized leader in the fields of 3-D printing and biomimetic materials, has been appointed as the first Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the Harvard School...
City Room: How Are You Warding Off the Flu?
Are you a flu-shot holdout? City Room wants to know what you're doing to keep those bad bugs away.
Canadians stuck with Netflix lite for foreseeable future
With a host of announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas, it appears that Netflix is not going to get any better, Peter Nowak reports.
A rock is a clock: Physicist uses matter to tell time
What is the simplest, most fundamental clock? Physicists have shown that a single atom is sufficient to measure time using its high-frequency matter wave. Conversely, the frequency of matter can...
First gas-powered passenger ferry handed over in Finland
Finnish cruise company Viking Line took possession Thursday of the world's first large passenger ferry powered by liquefied natural gas, calling it an "environmental pioneer in the cruise industry."
Scientists take to Twitter to reveal their less than scientific methods
Scientists across the world are tweeting about how experiments really get done. Some are brutally honest, most are very funnyScientists are a precise bunch. Our experiments are carefully planned down to the last...
Robert Coolman On Green Fuels and the Cutting Edge of Biofuels | Video
Robert Coolman is on the cutting edge of biofuels research.
NASA Drone to Probe Ozone Loss
Remote-controlled plane will ply the tropopause to study ozone chemistry.
Scientists design, control movements of molecular motor; Study offers blueprint for creating machines at the nanoscale
An international team of scientists has taken the next step in creating nanoscale machines by designing a multi-component molecular motor that can be moved clockwise and counterclockwise.
Danish chemist aims to bring supermolecules to the world
With applications spanning from non-shrink dental fillings to DNA-drugs the so-called dendrimers are a near magical material. Now a chemist from the University of Copenhagen has vowed to make the...
Music from the ear: Researchers show how an objective audiometric test can become even more reliable
Not only can the human ear detect sounds, it can also generate them. If the ear hears the two upper tones of a major triad, it produces the fundamental of...
Death on a nanometer scale: Study measures holes antibacterials create in cell walls
Researchers have created a biophysical model of the response of a Gram-positive bacterium to the formation of a hole in its cell wall, then used experimental measurements to validate the...
The Self-Assembling, Self-Healing Material Of The Future Is... Blood
Blood Clot Hsieh ChenScientists have figured out how clots form in the blood, and are using the same method to develop a new class of materials. Somewhere inside of your body right...
Scientists develop strongest, lightest glass nanofibers in the world
Globally the quest has been on to find ultrahigh strength composites, leading scientists to investigate light, ultrahigh strength nanowires that are not compromised by defects. Historically, carbon nanotubes were the...
'Comet water' ions found in bacterial protein
Developments arising from new science techniques at Keele University in the UK, the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), the flagship centre for neutron science, and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), have...
Flexible organic photovoltaic cells with in-situ non-thermal photoreduction of spin coated graphene oxide electrodes
Researchers from Greece have demonstrated a groundbreaking methodology for controlled in-situ reduction of spin-casted graphene oxide (GO) nanometric films on flexible substrates and the subsequent realization of highly conductive and...
Synergistic effect discovered in layered quantum dot solar cells
(Phys.org)—Scientists have discovered that a solar cell consisting of two or three layers of quantum dots, with each layer tuned to a different part of the solar spectrum, has an...
Airborne pods seek to trace nuclear bomb's origins: Modular units crossing 'Valley of Death' for Air Force use
(Phys.org)—If a nuclear device were to unexpectedly detonate anywhere on Earth, the ensuing effort to find out who made the weapon probably would be led by aircraft rapidly collecting airborne...
'Sensorless sensing' technology enables accurate correction of temperature effects on LED performance
When comparing LEDs to incandescent light bulbs, there is a noticeable difference in light quality: LED lamps when dimmed are perceived to be "colder" than incandescents. At CES 2013 this...
Breakthrough iron-based superconductors set new performance records
(Phys.org)—The road to a sustainably powered future may be paved with superconductors. When chilled to frigid temperatures hundreds of degrees Celsius below zero, these remarkable materials are singularly capable of...
High-voltage vacuum power switch for smart power grids: First successful power switch using diamond semiconductor
As part of problem solving-oriented basic research sponsored by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), a group consisting of researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and...
Christopher Nolan's next film mission to go Interstellar
Dark Knight Rises director preparing to board brother Jonathan's sci-fi space adventure. Meanwhile, Steven Spielberg puts Robopocalypse on holdThe Dark Knight Rises director Christopher Nolan's next project looks likely to be an original...
Finding Signs Of Life With Ion Mobility Spectrometry
Disaster Response: Portable technique identifies chemicals in human breath that could signal that people are trapped inside a collapsed building
Chips that can steer light
If you want to create a moving light source, you have a few possibilities. One is to mount a light emitter in some kind of mechanical housing—the approach used in,...