SciGlow | All Science News In One Place
SciGlow is a newsletter of science stories from the major research labs. Headlines link to in-depth articles and editorials. SciGlow keeps scientists and others up-to-date on current research.
Scientists have designed an ultra-miniaturised device that could directly image single cells without the need for a microscope or make chemical fingerprint analysis possible from a smartphone. The device, made from a single nanowire 1000 times thinner than a human hair, is the smallest spectrometer ever designed. It could be used in potential applications such … Read more
In power electronics, semiconductors are based on the element silicon – but the energy efficiency of silicon carbide would be much higher. Physicists of the University of Basel, the Paul Scherrer Institute and ABB explain what exactly is preventing the use of this combination of silicon and carbon in the scientific journal Applied Physics Letters. Energy … Read more
The question whether light consists of particles or instead propagates as a wave through a medium has been the subject of scientific debate throughout most of the history of science. In the 20th century it finally has been established that light can be indeed both, particle and wave, but not at the same time. Still, … Read more
Theoretical physicists from SISSA and the University of California at Davis lay brand new foundations to such a fundamental process as heat transport in materials, which finally allow crystals, polycrystalline solids, alloys, and glasses to be treated on the same solid footing. This feat opens the way to the numerical simulation of the thermal properties of … Read more
Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have developed a new method with which strong magnetic fields can be precisely measured. They use neutrons obtained from the SINQ spallation source. In the future, it will therefore be possible to measure the fields of magnets that are already installed in devices and thus are inaccessible by … Read more
A team of scientists has collected experimental evidence indicating that a large concentration of electron pairs forms in a copper-oxide (cuprate) material at a much higher temperature than the “critical” one (Tc) at which it becomes superconducting, or able to conduct electricity without energy loss. They also detected these pairs way above the superconducting energy … Read more
An intense electron beam that could be used in the X-ray lasers of the future has been produced in research led at the University of Strathclyde. The beam was created by the plasma photocathode method, in which electrons were released from neutral atoms inside plasma. This has produced a potentially much brighter, plasma-based electron source which could … Read more
Standard optical microscopes can image cells and bacteria but not their nanoscale features which are blurred by a physical effect called diffraction. Optical microscopes have evolved over the last two decades to overcome this diffraction limit; however, these so-called super-resolution techniques typically require expensive and elaborated instrumentation or imaging procedures. Now, Australian researchers from the … Read more
A potentially useful material for building quantum computers has been unearthed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), whose scientists have found a superconductor that could sidestep one of the primary obstacles standing in the way of effective quantum logic circuits. Newly discovered properties in the compound uranium ditelluride, or UTe2, show that … Read more
Energy use in buildings – from heating and cooling your home to keeping the lights on in the office – is responsible for over one-third of all carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the United States. Slashing building CO2 emissions 80% by 2050 would therefore contribute significantly to combatting climate change. A new model developed by … Read more