DNA is a semiconductor
Fink and Schönenberger made their measurements by placing discrete amounts of DNA molecules in a water-based solution. A tiny droplet of the solution was then placed onto a gold-coated carbon foi...
Neutrinos may decay
According to the Standard Model of particle physics, the three types of neutrinos – electron, muon and tau neutrinos – have zero mass. But the number of atmospheric neutrinos – muon ...
Phosphors help switch on xenon
The glass tube in a conventional fluorescent light is coated on the inside with a phosphor layer and filled with a discharge material, usually mercury. Electrons excite the mercury atoms from the grou...
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Scientists illuminate gamma-ray burst
Although scientists have known about gamma-ray bursts since 1967, no one has come up with a feasible explanation of why they occur. The explosions may be caused by the collision of super-dense neutron...
Small melanin particles cause skin cancer
The radiation causes the eumelanin to generate large quantities of free oxygen radicals, which in turn damage cell DNA and hence may lead to cancer. His research was reported yesterday at the annual A...
Spinach to fuel optoelectronics
Although they are only 5nm long, each complex can generate 1 V in picoseconds, making them suitable for ultrafast switching, logic devices, and solar-power generation. The work was presented this week...
Matter makes waves
Phillips and his colleagues produced a focused directional output from the Bose-Einstein condensate by firing two laser beams into the condensate. One beam adds energy to the atoms, while the second s...
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Gravity-wave detectors target quantum gravity
Both the French-Italian gravity-wave interferometer, called VIRGO, and the LIGO interferometers in the US are designed to detect very weak gravity waves by using lasers to monitor test masses placed a...
Solar system is chaotic
Murray and Holman ran numerical simulations of the planets positions over a 200 million year period using their new technique. They discovered that although the outer planets appear in stable orbits, ...
US dominates world patents
The National Science Foundation report also discovered that the US, Russia and Japan have the lowest number of patents awarded to foreign inventors. In all the other countries surveyed, over two-third...
