“This budget is seriously good news for UK physics,” Ian Halliday, PPARC chief executive, told PhysicsWeb. “It has provided PPARC’s first real budget increase for 20 years.” This contrasts with the last round of spending two years ago when PPARC was the only research council not to receive a real-terms rise in funding. The Engineering […]
Dago de Leeuw, a physicist at Philips Research Laboratories in the Netherlands, leads a team of physicists recognized for their pioneering research in plastic electronics. De Leeuw and colleagues from The Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and the UK developed a new class of transistors based on polymers. The transistors are strong but flexible and are cheaper […]
The internal energy levels of bulk silicon – in particular its ‘indirect bandgap’ – makes it emit light very inefficiently. Existing lasers are therefore based on ‘direct’ bandgap materials like gallium arsenide, which readily emit light. But these materials are expensive and difficult to integrate into the silicon chips used throughout the electronics industry. Pavesi […]
The US Government makes another presentation next week with the National Medal of Science awards on 1 December. Physicists Willis Lamb and Jeremiah Ostriker receive the medal. Lamb, of the University of Arizona, won the 1995 Nobel Prize for experimental work on hydrogen that revealed a new quantum relativistic effect. His work became one of […]
Some liquids are very useful because their molecules act as tiny dipoles that can be aligned by electric or magnetic fields. Vehicle clutches, ink-jet printers and lubricants are among the applications that make use of these so-called dipolar fluids, which consist of micron-sized spherical particles suspended in a fluid. But to exploit the liquids further, […]
The standard model – developed by Pierre Weiss in 1907 – treats paramagnets as systems of non-interacting magnetic dipoles. The theory successfully describes the behaviour of paramagnets – materials that become weakly magnetized inside an applied magnetic field – but cannot account for ferromagnets. Ferromagnets are strongly magnetic even when there is no external field, […]
Read article: Space to play a starring role in Europe’s future
ESA’s director general Antonio Rodotà appointed the committee in March 2000. Carl Bildt, former Swedish Prime Minister and UN Envoy to the Balkans, Jean Peyrelevade, President of Crédit-Lyonnaisse, and Lothar Späth, CEO of German laser and optics company Jenoptik, were chosen to represent political, economic and industrial interests. The committee compares the annual US investment […]
Read article: End of the line for LEP
Hints that the elusive Higgs boson – the holy grail of particle physics – had finally been sighted prompted CERN to extend LEP operation by five weeks. But in a race against time particle physicists failed to find convincing evidence to justify the continued operation of the accelerator. While the latest results from all four […]
Read article: Vortices get in a spin
Ordinary experimental fluids are subject to effects like viscosity and can be difficult to manipulate. Durkin and Fajans therefore used a cylindrical column of magnetically confined electrons to simulate a perfect fluid. Electron density is equivalent to fluid vorticity, and this strongly magnetized electron column behaved as a vortex. The researchers used a photocathode to […]
Read article: A celebration of science
Physics is well catered for within the week’s activities. A mock spaceship is part of an exhibition exploring the sun’s activity and how it affects us, and a film – Inspired by Nature – emphasises the link between naturally occurring phenomena and everyday products and appliances. An exhibition in Paris aims to demystify radioactivity by […]
