Phase diagram hints at traffic solution
Helbing and co-workers have identified six different traffic phases: homogeneous congestion, oscillatory congestion, triggered stop-and-go traffic, moving localised clusters, pinned localised clusters...
US nuclear labs step up security
The report has already led to security being tightened at all laboratories run the Department of Energy, including those at Los Alamos and Livermore. Fears over the new security regime – visitor...
Hubble constant starts to settle down
The Hubble team, led by Wendy Freedman of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, has spent the last eight years using the telescope to make more accurate measurements of the Hubb...
e/5 particles discovered
In 1980 Klaus von Klitzing discovered that the so-called Hall conductance across a material varied in steps, not continuously, as the magnetic field was changed. In other words the Hall effect was qua...
Nanotubes muscle in on ‘smart materials’
The new technique works because the salt water conducts electricity. As the voltage on the tape changes, electrical charge carriers are injected into the nanotubes. These form electrolyte ions near th...
Pugwash calls for new roles for Aldermaston
Aldermaston has over 4000 employees and a budget of £300m. Over half of this (£168m) is spent on the manufacture, maintenance and testing of nuclear weapons, and on related research. Another...
Understanding avalanches
Snow avalanches occur when the mass of the snow overcomes the frictional resistance of the slope. This usually takes place when snow layers near the slope are loosened by spring rains or vibrations. D...
Galactic nuclei outdistances quasars
Wil van Breugel from the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and colleagues from the University of California, Berkeley and Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands found their galactic nucleus by looking for ...
Boost for UK physics
The JIF scheme is funded by the government and the Wellcome Trust, the world’s largest biomedical research charity. It was established after several reports found that a shortage of state-of-the...
ESA tightens its belt
The ESA Council meeting, held in Brussels over the past two days, also formalised closer ties to the European Union. ESA hopes that the EU will become a major new source of funds for some of the indus...
