Addressing a controversy first raised around 1910, two physicists have performed experiments with the aid of an engineer that validate anew the special theory of relativity’s limitations on the speed of light.

In a paper published in the Oct. 16 issue of the research journal “Nature,” the three researchers — Daniel Gauthier and Michael Stenner of Duke University and Mark Neifeld of the University of Arizona -– reached their findings by applying information theory to experiments with la

“Intelligent Agent” computer programs are roaming the Internet and watching the skies. It may sound like science fiction, but these programs, using Grid computing technology, will help astronomers detect some of the most dramatic events in the universe, such as massive supernova explosions. The Agents, created by the “eScience Telescopes for Astronomical Research” (eSTAR) project, have been deployed on the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii. The work is being announced at a conferenc

Once freed from its home inside the nucleus of an atom, a neutron lives on average 886.8 seconds (about 14.8 minutes), plus or minus 3.4 seconds, according to recent measurements performed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

This result, published in the Oct. 10 issue of Physical Review Letters, is the most precise ever achieved using beams of neutrons and is the culmination of almost 10 years of work. The new neutron lifetime value is consistent with physicists’ cur

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announces the release of the XForms 1.0 Recommendation. XForms 1.0 is the foundation for next-generation Web- based forms, combining the ability to separate purpose, presentation, and results with the Extensible Markup Language (XML).

A W3C Recommendation is the equivalent of a Web standard, indicating that this W3C-developed specification is stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who favor its adoption b

Researchers at the University of Warwick have found that phosphorus, an element commonly found in teeth, can act as a “superconductor” – but you would have to have the strength of Superman to clench your teeth hard enough for it to work – as it happens at a pressure of around 2.5 megabars – some 30,000 times harder than an ordinary human can clench their teeth.

Physicists were aware that lower pressures of around 0.1 megabars could convert the electrically insulating phosphorus to a form whi

Revised periodic table slanted toward astronomers

The periodic table isn’t what it used to be, thanks to innovations by a planetary chemist at Washington University in St. Louis.

Katharina Lodders, Ph.D., Washington University research associate professor in Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences, has evalutated data from numerous studies including her own and arranged the data into a periodic table slanted toward astronomers and cosmochemists. It’s the Cosmochemic

House maintenance is a never-ending and costly task. Roofing, siding, windows and even garage doors wear out.

Now researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a software program that takes the guesswork out of replacement decisions. The free program, called NEST (for National Economic Service-life Tools), allows homeowners to select the most cost-effective replacement material for roofing, siding, windows and garage doors. It also provides,

A franco-american quintet of cosmologists conducted by Jean-Pierre Luminet, from Paris Observatory (LUTH), has proposed an original explanation to account for a surprising detail observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) recently mapped by the NASA satellite WMAP. According to the team, who published their study in the 9 october 2003 issue of “Nature”, an intriguing discrepancy in the background luminous texture of the Universe can indeed be explained by a very specific global shape of space

Robots, machines that speak, answering machines that understand what we say … will be soon a regular part of our daily life. Concretely the University of the Basque Country (EHU/UPV), together with the universities of Zaragoza and Valencia, is developing a system capable of recognising speech. The aim of the project is to develop a machine which responds automatically to the user who asks for information about trains and timetables.

The machine will be able to recognise the voice of the p

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle places severe constraints on the subatomic world. To illustrate, for particles called bosons, the principle dictates that bosons either condense to form a superconductor or they must remain localized in an insulator. However, experiments conducted during the last 15 years on thin films have revealed a third possibility: Bosons can exist as a metal. Scientists have been struggling to interpret this surprising result.

“The conventional theory of metals is

Researchers at Purdue University are making it easier to read life’s genetic blueprint.

They have precisely placed strands of DNA on a silicon chip and then stretched out the strands so that their encoded information might be read more clearly, two steps critical to possibly using DNA for future electronic devices and computers.

Findings about the research are detailed in a paper posted online this month and will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Advanced Materials.

Physicists are getting more involved in the fight against diseases by studying the folding of proteins, which they hope will eventually lead to the development of new drugs. Illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease and even some cancers are the result of protein folding that has gone awry. Since proteins in the body perform different functions according to their shape, the folding process is considered a very important area of study.

Everett Lipman, a new assistant professor of physics at

ESA is now planning a mission that can detect moons around planets outside our Solar System, those orbiting other stars!

Everyone knows our Moon: lovers stare at it, wolves howl at it, and ESA recently sent SMART-1 to study it. But there are over a hundred other moons in our Solar System, each a world in its own right.
A moon is a natural body that travels around a planet. Moons are a by-product of planetary formation and can range in size from small asteroid-sized bodies of a f

A team of researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder has taken another step in the quest to build a compact, tabletop x-ray microscope that could be used for biological imaging at super-high resolution.

By firing a femtosecond laser – a laser that generates light pulses with durations as short as 100 trillionth of a second – through a gas-filled tube called a waveguide, they were able to create more efficient “laser-like” beams in regions of the spectrum that were previously inacc

A PhD student from Loughborough University has discovered why biscuits sometimes break-up after being baked. Published today in the Institute of Physics journal Measurement Science and Technology this discovery will help manufacturers work out how to make the perfect biscuit.

Biscuits such as the “Rich Tea” type sometimes develop cracks spontaneously up to a few hours after baking, making the biscuit liable to break under the application of small loads such as being packaged or transported t

Monitoring patients once they have left hospital is a vital part of follow-up care, but many small clinics and hospitals find it difficult to provide.

EUREKA’s MADISON project has developed a new computer package which will give small institutions the technical means to improve follow-up of outpatients by accessing the servers of larger hospitals. Using the new software, they can access and use the data held in the larger institutions to better follow patients’ medical and nutritional care