The UK synchrotron, once known as Diamond, is intended to replace the ageing second-generation SRS machine at the Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire, although the location of the new machine has still to be decided. The Wellcome Trust is contributing £110m to the construction costs. Biologists are likely to be the main users of the machine, […]
The fantastic progress in the miniaturization of electronic devices that has taken place in the past few decades has largely been made possible by perfecting a century-old technique called lithography. Devices are built up layer by layer, the pattern on each layer being defined by a lithographic “mask”. In this “top-down” approach we start with […]
Banin and co-workers used quantum dots made of indium arsenide, covered with a nonconducting barrier of hexane dithiol molecules and linked to a conducting gold film. The radius of the nearly spherical indium arsenide nanocrystals varied between 10 and 40 nm. Electrons tunnel from the gold through the insulating layer to the nanocrystal. The number […]
The team were able to measure the distance because NGC4258 is one of 22 nearby galaxies that have active nuclei consisting of a supermassive black hole (over 100 million solar masses) surrounded by a thin rotating cloud of gas and dust. As the cloud rotates, friction heats the dust and gas, exciting the molecules in […]
Scientists at the research laboratory of the Museums of France in Paris compared the painting with nine of the 70 works accredited to Van Gogh during his time at Auvers. However, they were not allowed to remove samples from the painting, and could not use the lab’s synchrotron X-ray source since radiation can sometimes heat […]
Stanley and colleagues looked at five different measures of research activity in universities: the annual expenditure on R&D, the number of papers published each year, the number of patents awarded, whether R&D funds had been transferred from one university to another by a funder, and the size of schools and departments within universities. They compared […]
Jeremy Newton, chief executive of NESTA, says that the fund will support projects across the whole spectrum of science, art and technology, particularly interdisciplinary research. But with such a wide remit and limited resources, funding will have to be highly selective. A key feature of NESTA, explains Newton, will be its willingness to take risks […]
During the 1980s the European Court of Justice in Strasbourg agreed that the British workers had been discriminated against, and in 1996 the court ordered the European Commission to settle the case. The workers can now expect to receive between £70000 and £100000 each. A major reason for the settlement is the collapse of the […]
Nearly all the quantum models of the brain depend on how long the brain can keep quantum coherence. Penrose argues for example, that microtubles – small hollow cylinders that help cells keep their shape in the brain – operate like a quantum computer and can keep information stored as ‘quantum waves’ for long periods of […]
The meeting, “Preserving the Astronomical Sky,” was held in Austria a few days before UNISPACE III, a major conference sponsored by the United Nations (UN) that will look at the impact and influence of space research and industry in the 21st Century. Light pollution has become an increasing problem in recent decades, with the resolution […]
