New tools for brain surgery
Unlike other instruments, the invention does not require any sharp blades or cumbersome power sources (such as those needed for ultrasound devices) in the operating theatre. Instead, a small paddle ro...
Small companies get the EU research bug
According to the report, over 80% of the SMEs that received an award during 1995-97 had never taken part in an EU project before, and some 8000 companies had never been involved in any sort of public ...
Quasar images confirm potential of virtual telescopes
HALCA was launched by Japanese astronomers in 1997 to detect radio signals at wavelengths that that are difficult to detect from the ground. In addition to conducting their own observations, the HALCA...
New light on plasma properties
Previous experiments found it difficult to measure plasma spectra because the high temperatures inside the plasma caused the spectral lines to blur. The Weizmann team solved the problem by adding oxyg...
Computers from chaos
It has been know for sometime that nature follows chaotic patterns that seem to allow organisms to respond to rapid changes in their environment. Sinha and Ditto have taken these equations further to ...
SOHO is safe
Luckily, SOHO drifted back into sunlight long enough to recharge its solar cells for communications with Earth, and in the past month the fuel has been heated from -100 C to 10 C. Engineers had to be ...
Trapping breakthrough for molecules
Many of the optical and magnetic techniques used to trap and cool atoms do not work with molecules because they have complex internal energy levels. Instead Doyle and his colleagues chilled the molecu...
Lasers, chaos, and bow-ties
Laser technology has come a long way since the 1960s. The very earliest lasers, such as ruby and helium-neon devices, were formidable contraptions. They relied on dilute active media with discrete ene...
Deuterium ‘shocked’ into metallic state
Gilbert Collins and colleagues used the NOVA laser at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to carry out the experiments (Science 281 1178). The deuterium was placed in a small copp...
Controversy reigns over ‘dark matter’ claim
Alcock and co-workers have been searching for MACHOs – massive compact halo objects – with a technique known as gravitational lensing. In this the gravitational field of a heavy object act...
