Sandia National Laboratories postdoctoral appointee Polina Vabishchevich, left, and Senior Scientist Igal Brener made a metamaterial that mixes two lasers to produce 11 colors ranging from the near infrared, through the colors of the rainbow, to ultraviolet. Credit: Photo by Randy Montoya

First nanostructured material for broad mixing of light waves. A multicolor laser pointer you can use to change the color of the laser with a button click – similar to a multicolor ballpoint pen – is one step closer to reality thanks to a new tiny synthetic material made at Sandia National Laboratories...

Cassini discovered complex organic molecules erupting from Enceladus into space. Southwest Research Institute scientists think hydrothermal processes in the moon’s rocky core could synthesize organics from inorganic precursors. Alternatively, these processes could be transforming preexisting organics by heating, or they could generate geochemical conditions in the ocean of Enceladus that would allow possible forms of alien life to synthesize biological molecules. Credit: Image Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/LPG-CNRS/Nantes-Angers/ESA

Discovery indicates Saturn’s moon meets critical requirements for life...

Study reveals atomic structure of tropoelastin, showing what goes wrong in some diseases. The stretchiness that allows living tissues to expand, contract, stretch, and bend throughout a lifetime is the result of a protein molecule called tropoelastin. Remarkably, this molecule can be stretched to 8X its length and always returns back to its original size.

Now, for the first time, researchers have decoded the molecular structure of this complex molecule, as well as the details of what can go wrong with its structure in various genetically driven diseases. Tropoelastin is the precursor molecule of elastin, which along with structures called microfibrils is the key to flexibility of tissues including skin, lungs, and blood vessels...

Squeezing light into nano-size volumes is enabled by surface plasmon resonance, a phenomenon that causes molecules to be trapped near the film, making them available for study under powerful microscopes. Credit: Justus Ndukaife/Vanderbilt University

An award-winning Vanderbilt University researcher used plasmonics to develop a new kind of nanotweezers that can rapidly trap and detect molecules, viruses and DNA – a device transformative for medicine that also has color printing applications. Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering Justus Ndukaife and his Purdue University collaborators poked holes in gold film smaller than the wavelength of light...