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279,047 articles from PhysOrg

Quantum interference fine-tuned by Berry phase

(Phys.org) -- A team from the University of Bristol’s Centre for Quantum Photonics (CQP) has experimentally demonstrated how to use Berry’s phase to accurately control quantum interference between different photons.

Tax evaders prefer institutional punishment

(Phys.org) -- Selfish behaviour is a threat to successful coexistence and mutual cooperation. In many cases this human cooperation is based on punishing those who do not cooperate. There can be two different forms of punishment here: direct punishment by peers and institutionalised punishment by institutions like the police. Arne Traulsen, Torsten Röhl and Manfred Milinski from the Max Planck...

The decades-long search for the Higgs

(Phys.org) -- It was a little over two years ago that the Large Hadron Collider kicked off its search for the Higgs boson. But the hunt for the Higgs really began decades ago with the realization of a puzzle to be solved, one that involved more than just the Higgs.

The interface between two non-conductive materials can be conductive

How can an electrically conductive interface appear at the junction between two materials which do not conduct electricity? Since such a phenomenon was discovered in 2004, conflicting hypotheses have been put forward in order to respond to this question, each with its fervent supporters and critics. An international team bringing together researchers from the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), the...

UKIRT discovers 'impossible' binary stars

(Phys.org) -- A team of astronomers have used the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) on Hawaii to discover four pairs of stars that orbit each other in less than 4 hours. Until now it was thought that such close-in binary stars could not exist. The new discoveries come from the telescope's Wide Field Camera (WFCAM) Transit Survey, and appear in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal...

Where did I park my spacecraft?

Researchers have developed a method to determine the location of a spacecraft within one hundred metres, even if the spacecraft is several hundred million kilometres from Earth. In addition to spacecraft-spotting, the same technique can be applied to study the atmosphere of our neighbouring planets or the structure of the planet’s interior using radio telescopes. Thus, for example,...

Independence day fireworks

This image shows four separate images of the M5.3 class flare from the morning of July 4, 2012. In clockwise order starting at the top left, the wavelengths shown are: 131, 94, 193, and 171 Angstroms. Each wavelength shows a different temperature of material, which in turn corresponds to different levels of the sun's atmosphere. By looking at images in several wavelengths, scientists can track how...

Microsoft engineer eyeballs Android botnet

(Phys.org) -- A Microsoft engineer has spotted a botnet that targets Yahoo! Mail users using Android devices. Terry Zink , who also writes an Internet security blog, said he has evidence of a botnet running on Android devices where spam e-mail messages are being sent from Yahoo mail servers on Android devices, logging into Yahoo! mail accounts and sending off spam. Zink, embarking on a tracking...

Researchers switch magnetic state and electric resistance of a single molecule on and off

One bit of digital information stored on a hard disk currently consists of about 3 million magnetic atoms. Researchers from Germany and Japan have now developed a magnetic memory with one bit per molecule. By an electric pulse, the metal-organic molecule can be switched reliably between a conductive, magnetic state and a low-conductive, non-magnetic state. This novel correlation for molecules is...


WEDNESDAY 4. JULY 2012


A closer look at the Higgs boson

Scientists working at the world's biggest atom smasher near Geneva have announced the discovery of a new subatomic particle that looks remarkably like the long-sought Higgs boson. Sometimes called the "God particle" because its existence is fundamental to the creation of the universe, the hunt for the Higgs involved thousands of scientists from all over the world.

EU launches new app for passengers' rights

(AP) — The European Union says it has launched a new smartphone application which allows air and rail passengers stranded in the EU due to cancellations or delays to immediately check on their legal rights regarding rebates and compensation.

Melting ice the greatest factor in rising sea levels

Melting glaciers and ice sheets have contributed more to rising sea levels in the past decade than expansion from warming water, according to modelling in the latest report by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems (ACE) Cooperative Research Centre.

New study sheds new light on planet formation

A study published in the July 5 edition of the journal Nature is challenging scientists' understanding of planet formation, suggesting that planets might form much faster than previously thought or, alternatively, that stars harboring planets could be far more numerous.

'Googling' through unique audio material: towards a better search result

Searching and finding in audio archives can be improved if we take a different look at the underlying technology and allow for how the results are used. This provides a better picture of the problems and the points for improvement. Laurens van der Werff demonstrated this in his PhD thesis 'Evaluation of Noisy Transcripts for Spoken Document Retrieval', which he will defend on 5 July at the...

A novel way to boost personal skills

(Phys.org) -- Psychologists from Royal Holloway, University of London believe a collaborative writing project can help boost self-esteem and improve core skills such as team work among young people.

A typo in the Declaration of Independence?

Dissemination of public documents was slow and labor-intensive in 1776. It’s too late to know for sure, but it’s interesting to speculate why a colonial printer — hurried, perhaps carried away by the excitement — would print copies of the Declaration of Independence and get the date wrong: June, weeks before the document was actually signed.

An epic crater called Odysseus

On June 28 NASA’s Cassini spacecraft passed by Tethys, a 1,062-kilometer (662-mile) -wide moon of Saturn that’s made almost entirely of ice. Tethys is covered in craters of all sizes but by far the most dramatic of all is the enormous Odysseus crater, which spans an impressive 450 kilometers (280 miles) of the moon’s northern hemisphere — nearly two-fifths of its entire...

Computer simulations reveal how rhodium catalysts structures break ethanol molecules into hydrogen atoms

Hydrogen gas (H2) is an ideal energy carrier for fuel cells, but finding sustainable ways to produce large quantities of hydrogen continues to be a technological challenge. Jia Zhang at the A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing and co-workers have now used sophisticated calculations to uncover a critical chemical mechanism that may make catalytic transformation of safe, renewable liquid...