Category Physics

Mark Pollock and trainer Simon O’Donnell Courtesy of Mark Pollock

Robotic step training, noninvasive spinal stimulation enable patient to take thousands of steps. A 39yo man who had had been completely paralyzed for 4 years was able to voluntarily control his leg muscles and take many steps in a robotic exoskeleton during 5 days of training with the aid of the robotic device combined with a novel noninvasive spinal stimulation pattern that does not require surgery, UCLA scientists report.

This is the first time that a person with chronic, complete paralysis has regained enough voluntary control to actively work with a robotic device designed to enhance mobility...

Coccolithophore phytoplankton Emiliania huxleyi and cells covering crystals of calcium carbonate—coccoliths. Credit: Hiroshima University

Coccolith disks made of calcium carbonate, formed by coccolithophores, which are single-celled algae such as E. huxleyi, one of the promising biomass resources reduces/ enhances light entering cells by light scattering. Elucidation of the physiological significance of coccolith formation can help promote efficient bioenergy production using microalgae.

The most important question concerning coccolith function is with regard to how they modulate solar light in the ocean, where huge blooms of E. huxleyi have frequently been observed as satellite images by SeaWiFS Color Senor from space...

This is especially in situations where the water is in the form of vapor or tiny droplets. Enhancing the mobility of liquid droplets on rough surfaces has applications ranging from condensation heat transfer for heat exchangers in power plants to more efficient water harvesting in arid regions where collecting fog droplets on coated meshes provides drinking water and irrigation for agriculture to the prevention of icing and frosting on aircraft wings.

“This represents a fundamentally new concept in engineered surfaces,” said Assistant Prof Tak-Sing Wong. “Our surfaces combine the unique surface architectures of lotus leaves and pitcher plants, in such a way that these surfaces possess both high surface area and a slippery interface to enhance droplet collection and mobility...

Results of the analyses by individual experiments (coloured) and both experiments together (black), showing the improvement in precision resulting from the combination of results. Read more at:

3 years after the announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson, the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations present for the first time combined measurements of many of its properties, at the third annual Large Hadron Collider Physics Conference (LHCP 2015). By combining their analyses of the data collected in 2011 and 2012, ATLAS and CMS draw the sharpest picture yet of this novel boson. The new results provide in particular the best precision on its production and decay and on how it interacts with other particles...