All Stories by Peter Weiss
- Tech
Technique senses damage before it hurts
A new technique for automatically detecting damage to aircraft, buildings, and other structures may lead to practical damage-monitoring systems by reducing false alarms that make today's laboratory prototypes unsuitable for real-world use.
- Physics
The Brazil nut effect gets more jumbled
New and puzzling evidence for why big particles bob to the top when mixtures of granular materials are shaken-the so-called Brazil nut effect-emerges from an experiment showing that even the air between grains plays a role.
- Tech
Wiring teensy tubes, strands into circuits
Single-molecule transistors and other comparably small components are now at work in prototype circuits that may eventually lead to electronic devices crammed with up to 100,000 times more transistors per square centimeter than are on today's chips.
- Tech
Exploding wires open sharp X-ray eye
Using exploding wires to make low-energy X-rays, a novel, high-resolution camera snaps X-ray pictures of millimeter-scale or larger objects—such as full insects—in which features only micrometers across show up throughout the image.
- Tech
Curve on golf club sends ball straight
Although the curved faces of golf clubs called drivers blast balls sideways, their convex design works just right to compensate for other effects tending to make balls veer off the fairway, new calculations show.
- Tech
Cooling film tempers tiny hot spots
Shattering a 40-year-old performance limit, a new layered, semiconductor material promises to spur wider use of so-called thermoelectric devices that cool or heat electrically and can convert heat to electric power.
- Tech
Brain cells stay in focus as rats roam
So light that it doesn't weigh down a rat's head, a new microscope mounted over a hole in the awake animal's skull promises to open a window into individual neurons as a rat carries out normal activities.
- Tech
Natural micromachines get the points
In custom-made microscopic channels marked with arrows, mobile and thread-like cell structures called microtubules no longer wander aimlessly but slither in a fixed direction—a potential step toward tiny, man-made factories where cellular micromachinery churns out drugs or novel materials.
- Physics
Nobel prize: Physics
Three scientists have jointly won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics for creating the first samples, 6 years ago, of a long-sought and strange state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate.
- Animals
Shrimps spew bubbles as hot as the sun
With the snap of a claw, a pinkie-size ocean shrimp generates a collapsing air bubble that's hot enough to emit faint light.
- Physics
Magnets, not magic, make gas bulbs bad
Once as baffling as black magic, the random failures of glass bulbs used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) now appear to stem from unexpected magnetization of the glass.
- Physics
Path to new elements now looks steeper
Making novel, superheavy elements is harder than was previously expected, according to a new experiment, but the findings may also help physicists better choose which atoms to smash into which.
