Findings may lead to advances in on-chip data transmission

New research from Rice University has demonstrated an important analogy between electronics and optics that will enable light waves to be coupled efficiently to nanoscale structures and devices.

The research is available online from the journal Nano Letters and will appear in an upcoming print edition.

“We’ve discovered a universal relationship between the behavior of light and electrons,” said st

Louisiana Tech has reached further in its help to Katrina victims, this time through technology.

Dr. Box Leangsuksun, an associate professor of computer science, along with five computer science graduate students, has created a new Web site aimed at locating people displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

His hope is that the site will help streamline the search process. Other sites are available that perform similar tasks, he said, but they contain so much information that users c

After the anthrax attacks in the United States in 2001 the threat of a larger and more deadly bioterrorism attack — perhaps from smallpox, plague or tularemia — became very real. But the ability to detect such biological agents and rapidly contain an attack is still being developed.

In a significant finding, researchers at Northwestern University’s Center for Quantum Devices have demonstrated solar-blind avalanche photodiodes (APDs) that hold promise for universal bio

Measurements improve prospects for international redefinition of the kilogram

A leading experimental method for defining the kilogram in terms of properties of nature is now more accurate than ever, scientists at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) reported today. The advance may move the scientific community closer to redefining the kilogram, the only one of the seven basic units of the international measurement system still defin

Scientists using the NASA Swift satellite and several ground-based telescopes have detected the most distant explosion yet: a gamma-ray burst from the edge of the visible Universe.

This powerful burst, probably marking the death of a massive star as it collapsed into a black hole, was detected on 4th September 2005. The burst comes from an era soon after stars and galaxies first formed, less than a billion years after the Big Bang.

“How a single star could generate so m

Data reveal insights into formation of stars in early universe

NASA’s Swift satellite and ground-based telescopes have discovered the most distant exploding star on record, confirming a 1999 prediction made by University of Chicago astrophysicist Don Lamb and Daniel Reichart, who was then a graduate student at Chicago.
Now a faculty member at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Reichart led the team that discovered the afterglow of the explosion, called a gam

Diamonds have always been alluring, but now a team of scientists has made them truly magnetic — on the nanoscale.

In a paper published in the Aug. 26 issue of Physical Review Letters, the researchers report a technique to make magnetic diamond particles only 4-5 nanometers across. The tiny diamond magnets could find use in fields ranging from medicine to information technology.

Ferromagnetism has been historically reserved for metals, but scientists are becoming incre

As the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans for the next launch of the space shuttle, a critical aspect of the program’s safety is being assured by 5 million pieces of data collected recently by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

To help prevent a repeat of the 2003 accident when launch debris damaged the shuttle Columbia, causing it to break up on re-entry, NASA has begun illuminating shuttles with tracking radars during laun

It turns out that a stroke of lightning produces thermonuclear reaction, which generates quite a noticeable stream of neutrons.

To produce thermonuclear reaction it is necessary, firstly, to have nuclei with a large quantity of neutrons available, for example, deuterium nuclei, and secondly, these nuclei should possess sufficiently high velocity and merge together upon collision, having overcome the Coulomb barrier. It turns out that all these conditions are observed in the cour

The makers of a University of Southern California computer translation system consistently rated among the world’s best are teaching their software something new: English grammar.

Most modern “machine translation” systems, including the highly rated one created by USC’s Information Sciences Institute, rely on brute force correlation of vast bodies of pre-translated text from such sources as newspapers that publish in multiple languages.
Software matches up phrases

Astronomers Find Farthest Known Gamma-Ray Burst with ESO VLT

An Italian team of astronomers has observed the afterglow of a Gamma-Ray Burst that is the farthest known ever. With a measured redshift of 6.3, the light from this very remote astronomical source has taken 12,700 million years to reach us. It is thus seen when the Universe was less than 900 million years old, or less than 7 percent its present age.

“This also means that it is among the intrinsically brightest G

Researchers in the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley have simulated the process by which a quantum computer could calculate to high precision an important basic property of two small molecules. Simulated quantum calculations of the ground-state energies of water (H 2O) and lithium hydride (LiH) are the first of this kind ever done for specific molecules.

Alán Aspuru-Guzik, Anthony Dutoi, Peter Love, and Marti

Astronomers have glimpsed dusty debris around an essentially dead star where gravity and radiation should have long ago removed any sign of dust — a discovery that may provide insights into our own solar system’s eventual demise several billion years from now.

The results are based on mid-infrared observations made with the Gemini 8-meter Frederick C. Gillett Telescope (Gemini North) on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea. The Gemini observations reveal a surprisingly high abundance

Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, a team of astronomers led by the University of Rochester has detected gaps ringing the dusty disks around two very young stars, which suggests that gas-giant planets have formed there. A year ago, these same researchers found evidence of the first “baby planet” around a young star, challenging most astrophysicists’s models of giant-planet formation.

The new findings in the Sept. 10 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters not only r

New processes have applications in bioimaging and solar conversion

Efficient and highly scalable new chemical synthesis methods developed at the University at Buffalo’s Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics have the potential to revolutionize the production of quantum dots for bioimaging and photovoltaic applications.
A patent has been filed on the methods, which were described last month in papers in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and Applied Phy

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have uncovered important evidence that explains how water, usually an inhibitor of catalytic reactions, can sometimes promote them. The findings could lead to fewer constraints on reaction conditions potentially leading to the development of lower cost techniques for certain industrially important catalytic reactions. The results appear in the September 6, 2005 issue of Physical Review Letters.

“Normally, in most catalytic reactio