Physics Buzz

How many years have we been coming to the shore? How many trips? Why do we keep coming back… the air in the sky? The sand? The water? So familiar and yet constantly changing. We feel the same excitement every time we come. Fluid flows under us, around us, over us -- constantly blurring, constantly refreshing.

“Spider-Man, Thor, the Hulk, the X-Men. . . Okay, so I’ve created a whole caboodle of superheroes. But the important thing is, now it’s your turn.” —Stan Lee

Laser printing has taken a large step forward into the diminutive realm of nanotechnology with recognizable, albeit imperfect, reproductions of images so small that they could fit comfortably on the finest human hair.

Runners using aluminum blankets to keep warm. Credit: Adapted from Ian Hunter | flickr If you've ever stood exposed and shivering at the end of a run, you'll know just how quickly the body loses heat without protective clothing. To prevent this, aluminized plastic blankets are a common sight at the end of races; they insulate from cold air and reflect back the body's heat. But these blankets are impractical and uncomfortable for daily use, trapping in moisture as well as heat.  Using some basic principles of radiation reflection and a coating of silver nanowires, physicists have now developed a new type fabric which can keep you toasty warm and comfortable. So warm in fact that the authors think their insulating fabric could be a solution to the large amounts greenhouse gases created by wintertime indoor heating.

Reusable, magnetic nanoparticles can remove crude oil from water. A boat wades through the oily waters of the Gulf of Mexico. image by Kris Krug , rights When 4.9 million barrels of crude oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico following the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster, cleanup crews rushed to deploy floating barriers to contain crude oil collecting on the water's surface. However, this did nothing for the oil that never reached the top.

Originally published: Jul 26 2013 - 4:00pm, Inside Science News Service By: Ranjini Raghunath, ISNS Contributor (ISNS) -- A heartbeat, or a pulse, is a standard indicator of whether a person or any other animal is dead or alive. But for a single biological cell, checking its viability – its state of being "alive" – is not that simple. Knowing a cell's viability is valuable information in studying how an antibiotic works, how toxic substances kill cells and how an infection spreads. However, most viability tests for cells involve invasive procedures – such as injecting a dye into the cell. The tests are expensive and afterward, scientists have to dispose of the cells. But now, a group of South Korean researchers have developed a non-invasive device that uses the cell's heat conductivity – its ability to act as a conduit for heat – to determine its viability. Liver cells infected with Marburg virus Image Credit:  CDC / Dr. J. Lyle Conrad

Inside Science News Service Originally published : Jul 9 2013 - 2:45pm By: Peter Gwynne, ISNS Contributor (ISNS) -- A group of physicists and biologists has developed a nanotechnology-based technique that promises to increase the speed and sensitivity of diagnosing Lyme disease, a bacterial condition that infects more than 30,000 Americans each year. The method, still in the research stage, uses nanotubes – tiny threads of carbon barely visible to the human eye – attached to antibodies that react with particular proteins carried by the bacteria responsible for the disease. An illustration of a Lyme antibody attached to a carbon nanotube. Image Credit: The University of Pennsylvania "We're looking directly for the Lyme organisms," said physicist A. T. Charlie Johnson, who led the multidisciplinary group at the University of Pennsylvania with bacteriologist Dustin Brisson. "This could be very useful in detecting early-stage infection."

As the 1940's became the 50's, scientists identified the structure and function of DNA as the basic building block of life. Scientists today are using the fundamental ability of DNA to self-organize to engineer nanostructures from IBM microchips to nano-robots . It's the age of DNA origami and with it comes new possibilities for drug delivery , and nanosenors. Now, physicists at the Institute of Chemistry and Biology of Membranes and Nano-objects at the National Center for Scientific Research in Pessac, France have developed a computer program that describes how DNA strands selectively fold and weave together to form two- and three-dimensional structures. Program can identify how DNA strands will selectively bind at certain positions. Source: J.M. Arbona, et. al. Phys. Rev. E 86, 051912 (2012)

The APS March Meeting has arrived. About 10,000 attendees from around the world have gathered in Boston to participate in this massive physics conference. Over 8,000 research talks will be presented, and many of them have beautiful accompanying images and videos. So to start off the week, here's a glimpse into the aesthetic side of the March Meeting. Soap Memory A soap bubble trapped in a colorful configuration. Image courtesy Denis Terwagne. Experiments show that soap bubbles can become stuck in colorful configurations. This soap memory can be demonstrated through a triangular prism. Related Talk: Memory effects in soap film arrangements Nanowire Hay Bales Scanning electron micrograph of iron-titanium nanowires. Image courtesy Pegah M. Hosseinpour, Northeastern University.

Physicist German Drazer drops a ball bearing into a Lego pegboard. (Will Kirk/JHU) WASHINGTON (ISNS) -- Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed an unorthodox method to study the behavior of microscopic nano-particles -- by playing with Legos. The team, led by physicists Joelle Frechette and German Drazer, built a grid out of round Lego blocks and immersed it in liquid glycerin to observe the paths of ball bearings they dropped into the construction. Though Lego blocks are many times larger than a nano-device, particles passing through the grid behave fundamentally the same way, the researchers said. By increasing the scale of the experiment from nano to Lego size, researchers are able to better visualize, describe and ultimately predict the behavior of the particles that normally are far too small to see. Many designs for nano-devices require the sorting of microscopic particles and ball bearings immersed in glycerin behave much the same way as nano-particles