Category Physics

This is a 3-D printed nerve regeneration pathway implanted in a rat helped to improve walking in 10 to 12 weeks after implantation. Credit: University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering

Scientists have developed a 1st-of-its-kind, 3D printed guide that helps regrow both the sensory and motor functions of complex nerves after injury. The groundbreaking research has potential to help more than 200,000 people annually who experience nerve injuries or disease.

Nerve regeneration is a complex process. Because of this complexity, regrowth of nerves after injury or disease is very rare. Nerve damage is often permanent. Advanced 3D printing methods may now be the solution...

The lifetime of local water structures is probed using ultrafast laser pulses. Credit: © Yuki Nagata / MPI-P

The local structural dynamics of liquid water, such as how quickly water molecules change their binding state, has now been characterized by a team of scientists. Using innovative ultrafast vibrational spectroscopies, the researchers show why liquid water is so unique compared to other molecular liquids.

With the help of a novel combination of ultrafast laser experiments, the scientists found that local structures persist in water for longer than a picosecond, a picosecond (ps) being one thousandth of one billionth of a second (10-12 s). This observation changes the general perception of water as a solvent. “71% of Earth’s surface is covered with water...

This image shows a 3-D illustration of a metasurface skin cloak made from an ultrathin layer of nanoantennas (gold blocks) covering an arbitrarily shaped object. Light reflects off the cloak (red arrows) as if it were reflecting off a flat mirror. Credit: Image courtesy of Xiang Zhang group, Berkeley Lab/UC Berkeley

It conforms to the shape of an object and conceal it from detection with visible light. Although this cloak is only microscopic in size, the principles behind the technology should enable it to be scaled-up to conceal macroscopic items as well.

Working with brick-like blocks of gold nanoantennas, the Berkeley researchers fashioned a “skin cloak” barely 80nm in thickness, that was wrapped around a 3D object about the size of a few biological cells and arbitrarily shaped with mul...

Scientists developed an adaptive system to accurately extract 3D data while maintaining the ability to capture a full-resolution 2D image without a dramatic system change, such as switching out a lens. Credit: © Artur Marciniec / Fotolia

A team of engineers has discovered how to harness the image stabilization and focus modules of a modern, digital camera to unlock new 3D imaging capabilities: ie repurposing its existing components. This new capability was successfully demonstrated in a proof-of-concept laboratory experiment using a small deformable mirror -a reflective surface that can direct and focus light.

The purpose of the experiment was to extract depth-of-field information from a “single shot” image – rather than traditional 3D imaging techniques that require multiple images- with...