This cross-sectional transmission electron microscope image shows a sample used for the charge-to-spin conversion experiment. The nano-sized grains of less than 6 nanometers in the sputtered topological insulator layer created new physical properties for the material that changed the behavior of the electrons in the material.
Credit: Wang Group, University of Minnesota

Discovery could have major impact on semiconductor industry...

Ti:Sapphire laser system built at the University of British Columbia.
Credit: University of British Columbia

For the first time, physicists at CERN have observed a benchmark atomic energy transition in anithydrogen, a major step toward cooling and manipulating the basic form of antimatter. “The Lyman-alpha transition is the most basic, important transition in regular hydrogen atoms, and to capture the same phenomenon in antihydrogen opens up a new era in antimatter science,” said Takamasa Momose, the University of British Columbia chemist and physicist who led the development of the laser system used to manipulate the anithydrogen...

Schematic diagram showing two stages of star formation in the Milky Way galaxy according to Noguchi. In upper illustration, blue (cold) and red (hot) indicate gas. The color map in bottom panel shows distribution of the elemental composition of stars calculated by Noguchi’s model with the purple line indicating how the elemental composition of the gas changes over time (Credit: M. Noguchi, courtesy of Nature). Overlaid contours show the distribution of solar neighborhood stars observed by APOGEE, a spectroscopic device attached to the 2.5 m telescope of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico (Credit: M. Haywood et al. A&A, 589, 66 (2016), reproduced with permission © ESO).

The Milky Way galaxy has died once before and we are now in what is considered its ...

Drivers of brain aging. Credit: Daniel G. Amen

Schizophrenia, cannabis use, and alcohol abuse are just several disorders that are related to accelerated brain aging. In the largest known brain imaging study, scientists from Amen Clinics (Costa Mesa, CA), Google, John’s Hopkins University, University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, San Francisco evaluated 62,454 brain SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) scans of more than 30,000 individuals from 9 months old to 105 years of age to investigate factors that accelerate brain aging. SPECT tomography) evaluates regional cerebral blood flow in the brain that is reduced in various disorders.

Lead author, psychiatrist Daniel G...