New insights into the structure of space and time, climate modeling, and the design of novel drugs, are but a few of the many research areas that will be transformed by the installation of three supercomputers at the University of Bristol.

At peak performance the multi-million pound high performance computers (HPCs) will carry out over 13 trillion calculations per second. That is equivalent to the entire population of the world working simultaneously on hand-held calculators

Thousands of residents of rural villages in India are receiving quality eye care thanks to a collaborative effort between an Indian hospital network and the researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Intel Corporation who have developed a new technology for low-cost rural connectivity.

This new technology, based on “Wi-Fi” wireless networks, allows eye specialists at Aravind Eye Hospital at Theni in the southern India state of Tamil Nadu to interview and exami

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and at the University of Missouri at Rolla have built an ultrasound analogue of the laser.

Called a uaser (pronounced WAY-zer) – for ultrasound amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, the instrument produces ultrasonic waves that are coherent and of one frequency, and could be used to study laser dynamics and detect subtle changes, such as phase changes, in modern materials.

“We have demonstrated

A protein called calpain can be the key to either preventing or promoting the cell death, a Queen’s University study has found.

“This work provides proof in principle that pharmacological inhibition of calpain may be used to block cell death in situations where this is not desirable, such as in neuronal cells of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s patients, but to promote cell death in cancer cells where this is clearly a very desirable outcome,” says lead researcher Peter Greer

Washington, D.C. Astronomers detected unusually high quantities of carbon, the basis of all terrestrial life, in an infant solar system around nearby star Beta Pictoris, 63 light-years away. “For years we’ve looked to this early forming solar system as one that might be going through the same processes our own solar system did when the rocky planets, including Earth, were forming,” commented lead author Aki Roberge,* who began the research while at Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magne

First discovered 150 years ago, Neanderthals have been studied more widely than any other form of human. Thanks to a new interactive inventory and online catalogue developed in Europe, scientists worldwide can now probe the secrets of this primitive relative from the comfort of their computer.

Neanderthal humans (Homo neanderthalensis) was once common throughout Europe, but died out some 30,000 years ago. Since the discovery of Neanderthal remains in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1856,

New insights into the structure of space and time, climate modeling, and the design of novel drugs, are but a few of the many research areas that will be transformed by the installation of three supercomputers at the University of Bristol.

At peak performance the multi-million pound high performance computers (HPCs) will carry out over 13 trillion calculations per second. That is equivalent to the entire population of the world working simultaneously on hand-held calculators for

How much carbon dioxide is produced from the energy you use in a week and how does this contribute to the problems of global warming and climate change? How can physics help? How many students can you fit into a tent?

This month at the Cheltenham Science Festival, Camp Energy – Survival of the Physicists will answer these questions. Four physics students have been challenged by the Institute of Physics to camp out at the festival from 7 to 11 June and live as carbon neutrally as

Our Sun has its explosive flares and spots and high speed wind, but it is a placid star compared to some. Stars that are much more massive live fast and die young, with blue-white, intensely hot surfaces that emit energy at a rate millions of times greater than that of the Sun. These stars are so bright that their light alone propels outflowing stellar winds – up to a billion times stronger than the solar wind – at speeds of up to 30,000 km/s, or one per cent of the speed of light.

Using massive clusters of galaxies as “cosmic telescopes,” a research team led by a Johns Hopkins University astronomer has found what may be infant galaxies born in the first billion years after the beginning of the universe.

If these findings are confirmed, the extra magnification provided by these gargantuan natural telescopes will have given astronomers their best-ever view of galaxies as they formed in the early universe, more than 12 billion years ago, said Holland Ford

Two of the five most important papers published in the 43-year history of the journal Applied Physics Letters were written by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Nick Holonyak Jr., a John Bardeen Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at Illinois, was an author of both papers, which span the development of the light-emitting diode to the invention of the transistor laser.

As the American Institute of Physics cele

Scientists at the University of Chicago have bolstered the case for a popular scenario of the big bang theory that neatly explains the arrangement of galaxies throughout the universe. Their supercomputer simulation shows how dark matter, an invisible material of unknown composition, herded luminous matter in the universe from its initial smooth state into the cosmic web of galaxies and galaxy clusters that populate the universe.

Previous studies by other researchers had already v

Up to 2 1/2 times greater risk than cars

Every year Utah children are seriously injured and killed when they’re hit by a vehicle backing out of a driveway. But a child is up to 2 ½ times more likely to be backed over by a minivan or truck than by a car, according to a University of Utah study.

In the first report of its kind, University researchers found children are 2.4 times more likely to be struck by a van and 53 percent more likely to be hit by a truck than by a car.

Astronomers have found the largest number of the most distant, youngest galaxy clusters yet, a feat that will help them observe the developing universe when it was less than half its current age and still in its formative stages.

The team of astronomers from the University of Florida, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has found nearly 300 new galaxy clusters and groups, including nearly 100 at distances of eight to 10 billion light yea

Scientists have gone a long way to solving a question about the nature of plutonium that has remained a mystery since the Manhattan Project.

Plutonium behaves like no other element in nature. The bonding of its electrons causes its crystal structure to be uneven, similar to a mineral, and the nucleus is unstable, causing the metal to spontaneously decay over time and damage the surrounding metal lattice.

A plutonium-gallium alloy ingot reclaimed from a nuclear weapon.

A new understanding of how glass is formed may assist with our understanding of everything from the design of golf club heads to the structure of the early universe.

Princeton chemists have found that the formation of glass — a familiar substance that nonetheless retains some elusive scientific mysteries — always occurs differently depending on how quickly a liquid substance is cooled into its solid form. Though the findings will likely dash the hopes of condensed matter physi