American Institute of Physics - 22 News

Half diamond, half cubic boron, all cutting business

10-Sep-2015 - Diamonds are forever, except when they oxidize while cutting through iron, cobalt, nickel, chromium, or vanadium at high temperatures. Conversely, cubic boron nitride possesses superior chemical inertness but only about half of the hardness of diamonds. In an attempt to create a superhard ...

Why a latte is less likely to spill than a coffee

Foam absorbs energy from sloshing liquids, Princeton scientists report in the journal Physics of Fluids

26-Feb-2015 - Carrying a full cup of coffee from the kitchen to the dining room can be precarious for a sleepy-eyed caffeine addict who might accidentally send a wave of java sloshing over the rim. But add a bit of foam to the top and the trip becomes easier. Scientists have found that just a few layers of ...

Optical nanoantennas set the stage for a NEMS lab-on-a-chip revolution

26-Feb-2015 - Newly developed tiny antennas, likened to spotlights on the nanoscale, offer the potential to measure food safety, identify pollutants in the air and even quickly diagnose and treat cancer, according to the Australian scientists who created them. The new antennas are cubic in shape. They do a ...

Gift-wrapped gas molecules

Scientists in France and Scotland identify new encapsulation agents for delivery of nitric oxide, a potent antibacterial agent and vasodilator

06-Jan-2015 - A group of scientists led by researchers at the Université de Versailles' Institut Lavoisier in France has worked out how to stably gift-wrap a chemical gas known as nitric oxide within metal-organic frameworks. Such an encapsulated chemical may allow doctors to administer nitric oxide in a more ...

Predator-prey made simple

New method simplifies studies of predator-prey interactions and other 'bistable' systems

08-May-2014 - A team of U.K. researchers has developed a way to dramatically reduce the complexity of modeling "bistable" systems which involve the interaction of two evolving species where one changes faster than the other ("slow-fast systems"). Described in The Journal of Chemical Physics, the work paves the ...

Wind energy: On the grid, off the checkerboard

03-Apr-2014 - As wind farms grow in importance across the globe as sources of clean, renewable energy, one key consideration in their construction is their physical design -- spacing and orienting individual turbines to maximize their efficiency and minimize any "wake effects," where the swooping blades of one ...

Twist sound with metamaterials

27-Feb-2014 - A Chinese-U.S. research team is exploring the use of metamaterials -- artificial materials engineered to have exotic properties not found in nature -- to create devices that manipulate sound in versatile and unprecedented ways. In the journal Applied Physics Letters, the team reports a simple ...

New way to measure electron pair interactions

13-Feb-2014 - Shoot a beam of light or particles at certain special materials and you will liberate electrons -- pairs of them -- a phenomenon known as "electron pair emission," which can reveal fundamental properties of the solid and reveal information necessary to design novel materials for future ...

Cat's eyes: Designing the perfect mixer

31-Oct-2013 - As any amateur baker knows, proper mixing is crucial to a perfect pastry. Mix too little and ingredients will not be evenly distributed; beat instead of fold, and a soufflé will fall flat. Mixing strategies are even more critical for industrial products, where every batch that is manufactured ...

New forensic technique for identifying cloth fibers

31-Oct-2013 - Crime-scene investigators may soon have a new tool to help them catch evildoers. Researchers have demonstrated the proof-of-principle for a new forensic technique to identify individual fibers of cloth, which often all look alike. "White cotton fibers are so common and have so few visual ...