news 2014

Scientists from the University of Leeds have taken a crucial step forward in bio-nanotechnology, a field that uses biology to develop new tools for science, technology and medicine. The new study, published in print today in the journal Nano Letters, demonstrates how stable ‘lipid membranes’ – the thin ‘skin’ that surrounds all biological cells – can be applied to synthetic surfaces.

Press release issued: 6 October 2014 The next generation of aircraft could be thinner and lighter thanks to the development of a new imaging technique that could detect damage previously invisible to acoustic imaging systems. The nonlinear acoustic technique developed by researchers from the University of Bristol's Ultrasonics and Non-destructive Testing (NDT) research group is published in the current issue of Physical Review Letters together with an accompanying article in Physics .

A new technique will help surgeons to detect where the margins of cancerous breast tumours are during surgery, reducing the need for secondary operations in breast cancer patients. Scientists have developed a highly accurate prototype technique which can produce a detailed 'molecular fingerprint' of breast tissues removed during surgery.

This is a very hopeful sign that we can find and analyse more cloudless, smaller, planets in the future Nikku Madhusudhan Astronomers have discovered clear skies and steamy water vapour on a gaseous planet outside our solar system. The planet, known as HAT-P-11b, is about the size of Neptune, making it the smallest-ever planet for which water vapour has been detected.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have devised a new simulation technique which reliably predicts the structure and behaviour of different materials, in order to accelerate the development of next-generation batteries for a wide range of applications.

12 Sep 2014 Electrons that break the rules and move perpendicular to the applied electric field could be the key to delivering next generation, low-energy computers, a collaboration of scientists from The University of Manchester and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found. In a research paper published this week in Science , the collaboration led by MIT's theory professor Leonid Levitov and Manchester's Nobel laureate Sir Andre Geim report a material in which electrons move at a controllable angle to applied fields, similar to sailboats driven diagonally to the wind.

08 Sep 2014 Sandwiching layers of graphene with white graphene could produce designer materials capable of creating high-frequency electronic devices, University of Manchester scientists have found. Writing , the researchers have demonstrated how combining the two-dimensional materials in a stack could create perfect crystals capable of being used in next generation transistors.

A new technique which traps light at the nanoscale to enable real-time monitoring of individual molecules bending and flexing may aid in our understanding of how changes within a cell can lead to diseases such as cancer.

UCL scientists have discovered a new method to efficiently generate and control currents based on the magnetic nature of electrons in semi-conducting materials, offering a radical way to develop a new generation of electronic devices. One promising approach to developing new technologies is to exploit the electron's tiny magnetic moment, or 'spin'.

6 August 2014 The existence of a 'quantum Cheshire Cat', theoretically predicted last year by Professor Sandu Popescu of the University of Bristol and colleagues, has been observed experimentally by a team in Vienna. "Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought Alice, "but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!" No wonder Alice is surprised.

Discovery could help cut the cost of solar electricity Perovskite is a promising new material for solar cells, combing high efficiency with low materials costs Spray-painting method could be used in high volume manufacturing A team of scientists at the University of Sheffield is the first to fabricate perovskite solar cells using a spray-painting process - a discovery that could help cut the cost of solar electricity.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. You can change your cookie settings at any time. Otherwise, we'll assume you're OK to continue. Research into 13th Century bishop's theories about rainbows makes Nature Physics An interdisciplinary study of how a medieval bishop's theories inspired modern thinking about colour conception and the rainbow has been published in the prestigious journal, Nature Physics.

Press release issued: 30 July 2014 Physicists are one step closer to proving the reliability of a quantum computer - a machine which promises to revolutionise the way we trade over the internet and provide new tools to perform powerful simulations. By harnessing the strange laws of quantum mechanics, future quantum computers offer the hope of quickly solving problems that would take even the best supercomputers the lifetime of the universe to solve.

The discovery of water vapour in the atmospheres of three exoplanets includes the most precise measurement of any chemical in a planet outside the solar system, and has major implications for planet formation and the search for water on Earth-like habitable exoplanets in future.

Latest results from the detectors at CERN reveal that the Higgs boson particle continues to behave exactly as the Standard Model predicts. According to the Standard Model, the Higgs boson particle gives mass to fundamental particles. Since discovery of the new particle in 2012, particle physicists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have been hard at work trying to confirm whether it is indeed the Higgs of the Standard Model, or perhaps just one of many Higgs bosons waiting to be found.

A new discovery will make it possible to create pixels just a few hundred nanometres across that could pave the way for extremely high-resolution and low-energy thin, flexible displays for applications such as 'smart' glasses, synthetic retinas, and foldable screens. A team led by Oxford University scientists explored the link between the electrical and optical properties of phase change materials (materials that can change from an amorphous to a crystalline state).

New research shows that our brain displays a similar pattern of activity during dreams as it does during a mind-expanding drug trip. Psychedelic drugs such as LSD and magic mushrooms can profoundly alter the way we experience the world but little is known about what physically happens in the brain. New research, published in Human Brain Mapping , has examined the brain effects of the psychedelic chemical in magic mushrooms, called psilocybin, using data from brain scans of volunteers who had been injected with the drug.

Scientists have made an important advance in understanding how a protein that identifies and repairs cancerous cells operates. RNF4 is a type of regulatory protein that controls the function and fate of proteins in cells by chemically flagging them. Proteins like RNF4 play an important role in many biological processes such as the response to DNA damage.

26 Jun 2014 Astronomers have discovered three closely orbiting supermassive black holes in a galaxy more than 4 billion light years away. Most galaxies have just one black hole, usually with a mass of between 1 million and 10 billion times that of the Sun, at their centre. The discovery of a trio of black holes - the tightest trio ever found - suggests that such closely packed supermassive black holes are far more common than previously thought.

The discovery of three closely orbiting supermassive black holes in a galaxy more than four billion light years away could help astronomers in the search for gravitational waves: the 'ripples in spacetime' predicted by Einstein. An international team, including Oxford University scientists, led by Dr Roger Deane from the University of Cape Town, examined six systems thought to contain two supermassive black holes.