Books & Arts |
Featured
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News & Views |
Sticking to sugars
If evolution has had trouble making effective carbohydrate receptors, what hope do humans have of creating synthetic versions? A method for preparing libraries of such receptors boosts the chances of success.
- Anthony P. Davis
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Highlights |
Highlight:Physics
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News & Views |
Wider role for airborne chlorine
Unexpected chlorine chemistry in the lowest part of the atmosphere can affect the cycling of nitrogen oxides and the production of ozone, and reduce the lifetime of the greenhouse gas methane.
- Roland von Glasow
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News Feature |
Nuclear weapons physics: Welcome to the Atomic Weapons Establishment
With the launch of a powerful laser facility, Britain's most secretive lab is opening up to academics. Geoff Brumfiel secures a preview.
- Geoff Brumfiel
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News Feature |
Bioengineering: What to make with DNA origami
Chemists looking to create complex self-assembling nanostructures are turning to DNA. Katharine Sanderson looks at the science beneath the fold.
- Katharine Sanderson
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News |
Einstein passes cosmic test
General relativity fits survey observations but there's still room for its rivals.
- Zeeya Merali
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Review Article |
Electron liquids and solids in one dimension
- Vikram V. Deshpande
- , Marc Bockrath
- & Amir Yacoby
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News |
Old rocks drown dry Moon theory
Samples collected during Apollo missions suggest a wet interior, raising questions about lunar origins.
- Eric Hand
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News |
Galileo backed Copernicus despite data
Stars viewed through early telescopes suggested that Earth stood still.
- Katharine Sanderson
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News |
Heavy antimatter created in gold collisions
Most massive antimatter nucleus yet identified in particle experiments.
- Geoff Brumfiel
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Letter |
Linking dwarf galaxies to halo building blocks with the most metal-poor star in Sculptor
Current models indicate that the Milky Way's stellar halo was assembled from many smaller systems, and recent studies claimed that the true Galactic building blocks must have been vastly different from the surviving dwarfs. But the overall abundance pattern of elements in S1020549, the most iron-poor star in the Sculptor dwarf galaxies, is now found to follow that seen in low-metallicity halo stars, indicating that the systems destroyed to form the halo billions of years ago were not fundamentally different from the progenitors of present-day dwarfs.
- Anna Frebel
- , Evan N. Kirby
- & Joshua D. Simon
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Letter |
Reinventing germanium avalanche photodetector for nanophotonic on-chip optical interconnects
To integrate microchips with optical communications a photodetector is required to mediate the optical and electronic signals. Although germanium photodetectors are compatible with silicon their performance is impaired by poor intrinsic noise. Here the noise is reduced by nanometre engineering of optical and electrical fields to produce a compact and efficient photodetector.
- Solomon Assefa
- , Fengnian Xia
- & Yurii A. Vlasov
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Letter |
Superconductivity in alkali-metal-doped picene
The phenomenon of superconductivity continues to intrigue, and several new superconducting materials have been discovered in recent years — but in the case of organic superconductors, no new material system with a high superconducting transition temperature has been identified in the past decade. Now it has been shown that the introduction of potassium into crystals of organic molecule picene can yield superconductivity at temperatures as high as 18 K.
- Ryoji Mitsuhashi
- , Yuta Suzuki
- & Yoshihiro Kubozono
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Letter |
Helical crack-front instability in mixed-mode fracture
The addition of shear orthogonal to the tension-loading plane of crack propagation generates an instability that results in three-dimensional helical crack propagation, atomically rough surfaces and a fracture pattern resembling a series of lance shapes. Here numerical simulations reveal a new law that governs crack propagation in space for materials subject to general stress conditions.
- Antonio J. Pons
- & Alain Karma
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Research Highlights |
Applied physics: Sound lasers hum along
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Correspondence |
Esaki diode is still a radio star, half a century on
- Leo Esaki
- , Yasuhiko Arakawa
- & Masatoshi Kitamura
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Research Highlights |
Electronics: Caught on film
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Research Highlights |
Astrophysics: Old stars call out
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Research Highlights |
Nanotechnology: Light DNA machine
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Research Highlights |
Wildlife biology: Lizard back burden
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News & Views |
When mica and water meet
A neat mode of operation of the atomic force microscope has been used to probe the interface between mica and water. The results help to settle a long-standing debate about the nature of this interface.
- Joost W. M. Frenken
- & Tjerk H. Oosterkamp
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News & Views |
Mind the helical crack
Catastrophic breakage of brittle materials such as ceramics is usually triggered by the rapid spreading of cracks. Computer simulations have now cracked the three-dimensional details of this process.
- Markus J. Buehler
- & Zhiping Xu
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News & Views |
Hydrocarbon superconductors
Superconductivity has been discovered in the materials that form when alkali metals react with a solid hydrocarbon. This is the first new class of organic, high-temperature superconductor in a decade.
- Matthew J. Rosseinsky
- & Kosmas Prassides
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News |
Volunteer army catches interstellar dust grains
Stardust mission finds particles that represent the building blocks of the Solar System.
- Eric Hand
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Opinion |
Stop laser uranium enrichment
The US Congress should discourage efforts to advance the technology to make fuel for nuclear reactors, say Francis Slakey and Linda R. Cohen — the risks outweigh the benefits.
- Francis Slakey
- & Linda R. Cohen
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Books & Arts |
Is there anybody out there?
Paul Davies's latest book argues that the search for intelligent life beyond Earth should be expanded. Chris McKay considers why we should look closer to home — perhaps even in our DNA.
- Chris McKay
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News |
'Sasers' set to stun
Sound-based lasers could improve imaging and electronics.
- Geoff Brumfiel
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News |
A CoGeNT result in the hunt for dark matter
An underground experiment may have detected a type of dark-matter particle.
- Eric Hand
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Letter |
WASP-12b as a prolate, inflated and disrupting planet from tidal dissipation
WASP-12b is a planet of 1.4 Jupiter masses that orbits at a mean distance of only 3.1 stellar radii from its star; its orbital period is 1.1 days, and its radius (1.79 times that of Jupiter) is unexpectedly large. An analysis of its properties now reveals that the planet is losing mass to its host star at a rate of ∼10−7 Jupiter masses per year, and that dissipation of the star's tidal perturbation in the planet's convective envelope provides the energy source for its large volume.
- Shu-lin Li
- , N. Miller
- & Jonathan J. Fortney
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Letter |
Exploring the thermodynamics of a universal Fermi gas
In principle, it is possible to simulate some astrophysical phenomena inside the highly controlled environment of an atomic physics laboratory: previous work on the thermodynamics of a two-component Fermi gas (a system suited for such studies) led to thermodynamic quantities averaged over the trap. Now a general experimental method is reported that yields the equation of state of a uniform gas, providing new physical insights and enabling a detailed comparison with existing theories.
- S. Nascimbène
- , N. Navon
- & C. Salomon
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Letter |
Simultaneous phase and size control of upconversion nanocrystals through lanthanide doping
Many technological materials are intentionally 'doped' with foreign elements to impart new and desirable properties, a classic example being the doping of semiconductors to tune their electronic behaviour. Here lanthanide doping is used to control the growth of nanocrystals, allowing for simultaneous tuning of the size, crystallographic phase and optical properties of the hybrid material.
- Feng Wang
- , Yu Han
- & Xiaogang Liu
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Letter |
Electric currents couple spatially separated biogeochemical processes in marine sediment
It has been previously demonstrated that some microbes are capable of extracellular electron transport through so–called nanowires or electron shuttles. Here it is demonstrated that this may be a significant process in the marine sediment.
- Lars Peter Nielsen
- , Nils Risgaard-Petersen
- & Mikio Sayama
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Research Highlights |
Energy: Carbon from the mountains
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Research Highlights |
Particle physics: Dazzling dysprosium
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Research Highlights |
Organic chemistry: Catalysts cooperate
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News & Views |
Surprise in the strong regime
The finding that the normal phase of an ultracold gas of fermionic atoms in the strongly interacting regime is close to a Fermi liquid isn't quite what theorists expected for these systems.
- Yong-il Shin
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News & Views |
The statistics of style
A mathematical method has been developed that distinguishes between the paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and those of his imitators. But can the approach be used to spot imitations of works by any artist?
- Bruno A. Olshausen
- & Michael R. DeWeese
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News |
Bacteria buzzing in the seabed
Nanowires growing from bacteria might link up distant chemical reactions in sediments.
- Katharine Sanderson
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Books & Arts |
How lateral thinking saved lives
Martin Kemp is struck by the surreal quality of a home-made iron lung.
- Martin Kemp