Category Physics

Nanoporous gold is like a sponge of tiny pores. It could be used to make new devices to detect pathogens. Credit: Erkin ?eker, UC Davis

UC Davis Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering demonstrated that they could detect nucleic acids using nanoporous gold, a novel sensor coating material, in mixtures of other biomolecules that would gum up most detectors. This method enables sensitive detection of DNA in complex biological samples, such as serum from whole blood.

“Nanoporous gold can be imagined as a porous metal sponge with pore sizes that are a 1000X smaller than the diameter of a human hair,” said Assist. Prof Erkin Seker...

Rice University researchers have demonstrated an efficient new way to capture the energy from sunlight and convert it into clean, renewable energy by splitting water molecules. Credit: I. Thomann/Rice University

Process uses Light-harvesting Gold Nanoparticles, captures energy from ‘hot electrons’ (highly excited electrons). “Hot electrons have the potential to drive very useful chemical reactions, but they decay very rapidly, and people have struggled to harness their energy,” said lead researcher Assistant/Prof Isabell Thomann “For example, most of the energy losses in today’s best photovoltaic solar panels are the result of hot electrons that cool within a few trillionths of a second and release their energy as wasted heat.”

Capturing these high-energy electrons before they cool could a...

Two ‘twin’ stars with identical spectra observed by the La Silla Telescope. Since it is known that one star is 40 parsecs away, the difference in their apparent brightnesses allows calculation of the second star’s distance. Credit: Carolina Jofre

A new, highly accurate method of measuring distances between stars, could be used to measure the size of the galaxy, enabling greater understanding of how it evolved. Using a technique which searches out stellar ‘twins’, they have been able to measure distances between stars with far greater precision than is possible using typical model-dependent methods. It will complement to Gaia satellite, which is creating a 3D map of the sky over 5 yrs, and could aid in the understanding of fundamental astrophysical processes at work far away.

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To operate on the brain, doctors need to see fine details on a small scale. A tiny camera that could produce 3D images from inside the brain would help surgeons see more intricacies of the tissue they are handling and lead to faster, safer procedures.

An endoscope with such a camera is being developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. MARVEL, ie Multi Angle Rear Viewing Endoscopic tooL, has been honored this week with the Outstanding Technology Development award from the Federal Laboratory Consortium. An endoscope is a device that examines the interior of a body part.

“With one of the world’s smallest 3D cameras, MARVEL is designed for minimally nvasive brain surgery,” said Harish Manohara, principal investigator of the project at JPL...