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Sshhh, it?s listening: totally new computer interfaces
2007-12-31 23:11:00
Keyboards are a necessary part of today?s computers, right? Maybe not for much longer. A group of European scientists have used acoustic sensors to turn wooden tabletops and even three-dimensional objects into a new type of computer interface. Sound vibrating a windowpane or through a tabletop is something most people experience daily. Sound waves travel well through most solid materials. Now, European researchers have exploited the excellent propagation of sound waves through solids to turn everyday objects ? including 3D objects ? into a new kind of computer interface. By attaching sensors to solid materials, researchers from TAI-CHI, a project working with Tangible Acoustic Interfaces for Computer -Human Interaction, were able to locate exactly and track acoustic vibrations. Tapping on discrete areas of a whiteboard could generate musical notes on a computer. Tracking the sound of a finger scrawling words on a sheet of hardboard could translate, in real time, into handwriting...
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Evolution tied to Earth movement
2007-12-31 23:07:00
Scientists long have focused on how climate and vegetation allowed human ancestors to evolve in Africa. Now, University of Utah geologists are calling renewed attention to the idea that ground movements formed mountains and valleys, creating environments that favored the emergence of humanity. ?Tectonics [movement of Earth ?s crust] was ultimately responsible for the evolution of humankind,? Royhan and Nahid Gani of the university?s Energy and Geoscience Institute write in the January, 2008, issue of Geotimes, published by the American Geological Institute. They argue that the accelerated uplift of mountains and highlands stretching from Ethiopia to South Africa blocked much ocean moisture, converting lush tropical forests into an arid patchwork of woodlands and savannah grasslands that gradually favored human ancestors who came down from the trees and started walking on two feet ? an energy-efficient way to search larger areas for food in an arid environment. In their Geotimes artic...
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New method enables scientists to see smells
2007-12-29 18:49:00
Animals and insects communicate through an invisible world of scents. By exploiting infrared technology, researchers at Rockefeller University just made that world visible. With the ability to see smells, these scientists now show that when fly larvae detect smells with both olfactory organs they find their way toward a scented target more accurately than when they detect them with one.?Having two eyes allows us to have depth perception and two ears allows us to pinpoint a noise precisely,? says Leslie Vosshall, head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior. ?Sensing odors in stereo is equally important.? In research to be published in the December 23 online issue of Nature Neuroscience, Vosshall and her colleagues show that odor information is easier to perceive when it is smelled with both olfactory organs. By genetically manipulating flies to express odorant receptors in one olfactory organ or both, they show that the brains of Drosophila melanogaster larvae not only make ...
More About: Scientists , Method

Polarization technique focuses limelight
2007-12-29 18:37:00
An international team of astronomers, led by Professor Svetlana Berdyugina of ETH Zurich?s Institute of Astronomy, has for the first time ever been able to detect and monitor the visible light that is scattered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. Employing techniques similar to how Polaroid sunglasses filter away reflected sunlight to reduce glare, the team of scientists were able to extract polarized light to enhance the faint reflected starlight ?glare? from an exoplanet. As a result, the scientists could infer the size of its swollen atmosphere. They also directly traced the orbit of the planet, a feat of visualization not possible using indirect methods. Hot Jupiter The transiting exoplanet under study circles the dwarf star HD189733 in the constellation Vulpecula and lies more than 60 light years from the earth. Known as HD189733b, this exoplanet was discovered two years ago via Doppler spec-troscopy. HD189733b is so close to its parent star that its atmosphere expands from the ...
More About: Space , Technique , Limelight

Exoplanet Reflected Light Detected For The First Time
2007-12-28 19:53:00
An international team of astronomers, led by Professor Svetlana Berdyugina of ETH Zurich's Institute of Astronomy, has for the first time ever been able to detect and monitor the visible light that is scattered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet.Employing techniques similar to how Polaroid sunglasses filter away reflected sunlight to reduce glare, the team of scientists were able to extract polarized light to enhance the faint reflected starlight 'glare' from an exoplanet. As a result, the scientists could infer the size of its swollen atmosphere. They also directly traced the orbit of the planet, a feat of visualization not possible using indirect methods. Hot Jupiter The transiting exoplanet under study circles the dwarf star HD189733 in the constellation Vulpecula and lies more than 60 light years from the earth. Known as HD189733b, this exoplanet was discovered two years ago via Doppler spec-troscopy. HD189733b is so close to its parent star that its atmosphere expands from th...
More About: Space , Time , Light , First Time

How Mars Could Have Been Warm And Wet But Limestone Free
2007-12-27 19:33:00
Planetary scientists have puzzled for years over an apparent contradiction on Mars . Abundant evidence points to an early warm, wet climate on the red planet, but there's no sign of the widespread carbonate rocks, such as limestone, that should have formed in such a climate.Now, a detailed analysis in the Dec. 21 issue of Science by MIT's Maria T. Zuber and Itay Halevy and Daniel P. Schrag of Harvard University provides a possible answer to the mystery. In addition to being warmed by a greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as on Earth, the early Mars may have had the greenhouse gas sulfur dioxide in its atmosphere. That would have interfered with the formation of carbonates, explaining their absence today.It would also explain the discovery by the twin Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, of sulfur-rich minerals that apparently formed in bodies of water in that early Martian environment. And it may provide clues about the Earth's history as well.The challen...
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Anti-Alzheimer's mechanism in omega-3 fatty acids
2007-12-26 21:16:00
It's good news that we are living longer, but bad news that the longer we live, the better our odds of developing late-onset Alzheimer's disease. Many Alzheimer's researchers have long touted fish oil, by pill or diet, as an accessible and inexpensive "weapon" that may delay or prevent this debilitating disease. Now, UCLA scientists have confirmed that fish oil is indeed a deterrent against Alzheimer's, and they have identified the reasons why. Reporting in the current issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, now online, Greg Cole, professor of medicine and neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and associate director of UCLA's Alzheimer Disease Research Center, and his colleagues report that the omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) found in fish oil increases the production of LR11, a protein that is found at reduced levels in Alzheimer's patients and which is known to destroy the protein that forms the "plaques" associated with the disease. The plaque...
More About: Acids , Fatty , Anti , Omega , Mechanism

Suzaku Explains Cosmic Powerhouses
2007-12-26 21:13:00
By working in synergy with a ground-based telescope array, the joint Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)/NASA Suzaku X-ray observatory is shedding new light on some of the most energetic objects in our galaxy, but objects that remain shrouded in mystery.These cosmic powerhouses pour out vast amounts of energy, and they accelerate particles to almost the speed of light. But very little is known about these sources because they were discovered only recently. "Understanding these objects is one of the most intriguing problems in astrophysics," says Takayasu Anada of the Institute for Space and Astronautical Science in Kanagawa, Japan. Anada is lead author of a paper presented last week at a Suzaku science conference in San Diego, Calif.These mysterious objects have been discovered in just the last few years by an array of four European-built telescopes named the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.), located in the African nation of Namibia. H.E.S.S. indirectly detects ve...
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Some brain wounds cut likelihood of post-traumatic stress disorder
2007-12-25 21:02:00
A new study of combat-exposed Vietnam War veterans shows that those with injuries to certain parts of the brain were less likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The findings, from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Naval Medical Center, suggest that drugs or pacemaker-like devices aimed at dampening activity in these brain regions might be effective treatments for PTSD. PTSD involves the persistent reliving of a traumatic experience through nightmares and flashbacks that may seem real. Twenty percent to 30 percent of Vietnam vets (more than 1 million) have been diagnosed with PTSD, and a similar rate has been reported among Hurricane Katrina survivors in New Orleans. Public health officials are currently tracking the disorder among soldiers returning from Iraq. Yet, while war and natural disasters tend to call the greatest attention to PTSD, it's estimated that millions of Americans suffer from it as a result of assault, rape, child abuse, ca...
More About: Post , Stress , Brain , Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

MIT corrects inherited retardation, autism in mice
2007-12-24 23:48:00
Researchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have corrected key symptoms of mental retardation and autism in mice.The work, which will be reported in the Dec. 20 issue of Neuron, indicates that a certain class of drugs could have the same effect in humans. These drugs are not yet approved by the FDA, but will soon be entering into clinical trials.Fragile X syndrome (FXS), affecting 100,000 Americans, is the most common inherited cause of mental retardation and autism. The MIT researchers corrected FXS in mice modeling the disease. "These findings have major therapeutic implications for fragile X syndrome and autism," said study lead author Mark F. Bear, director of the Picower Institute and Picower Professor of Neuroscience at MIT.The findings support the theory that many of FXS's psychiatric and neurological symptoms--learning disabilities, autistic behavior, childhood epilepsy--stem from too much activation of one of the brain's chief network managers, the met...
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Sleep chemical central to effectiveness of deep brain stimulation
2007-12-24 23:44:00
A brain chemical that makes us sleepy also appears to play a central role in the success of deep brain stimulation to ease symptoms in patients with Parkinson?s disease and other brain disorders. The surprising finding is outlined in a paper published online Dec. 23 in Nature Medicine. The work shows that adenosine, a brain chemical most widely known as the cause of drowsiness, is central to the effect of deep brain stimulation, or DBS. The technique is used to treat people affected by Parkinson?s disease and who have severe tremor, and it?s also being tested in people who have severe depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder. Patients typically are equipped with a ?brain pacemaker,? a small implanted device that delivers carefully choreographed electrical signals to a very precise point in the patient?s brain. The procedure disrupts abnormal nerve signals and alleviates symptoms, but doctors have long debated exactly how the procedure works. The new research, by a team of neurosc...
More About: Deep , Sleep , Brain , Central , Chemical

Cell-to-Cell Communication in Bacteria
2007-12-22 23:00:00
The research in my laboratory focuses on the molecular mechanisms that bacteria use for intercellular communication. Our goal is to understand how bacteria detect multiple environmental cues, and how the integration and processing of this information results in the precise regulation of gene expression.The bacterial communication phenomenon that we study is called quorum sensing, which is a process that allows bacteria to communicate using secreted chemical signaling molecules called autoinducers. This process enables a population of bacteria to collectively regulate gene expression and, therefore, behavior. In quorum sensing, bacteria assess their population density by detecting the concentration of a particular autoinducer, which is correlated with cell density. This ?census-taking? enables the group to express specific genes only at particular population densities. Quorum sensing is widespread; it occurs in numerous Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. In general, processes ...
More About: Communication , Bacteria , Cell , Genetics

Changing the Rings: A Key Finding for Magnetics Design
2007-12-22 22:57:00
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology?s Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST) have done the first theoretical determination of the dominant damping mechanism that settles down excited magnetic states??ringing? in physics parlance?in some key metals. Their results, published in the Physical Review Letters,* point to more efficient methods to predict the dynamics of magnetic materials and to improve the design of key materials for magnetic devices. The ability to control the dynamics of magnetic materials is critical to high-performance electronic devices such as magnetic field sensors and magnetic recording media. In a computer?s magnetic storage?like a hard disk?a logical bit is represented by a group of atoms whose electron ?spins? all are oriented in a particular direction, creating a minute magnetic field. To change the bit from, say, a one to a zero, the drive?s write head imposes a field in a different direction at that point, causi...
More About: Design , Physics , Changing , Rings , Magnetic

Superexchange Spotted in Optical Lattice
2007-12-21 11:26:00
Physicists in Germany and the US are the first to see the superexchange interaction between atomic spins in an optical lattice. Superexchange leads to magnetism in a wide range of materials ? including some that are high-temperature superconductors ? and the team believes that their technique could shed light on the electronic and magnetic properties of these materials. Superexchange is an interaction that normally occurs between electron spins in a crystalline material. Unlike the more familiar exchange interaction, which affects electrons that are close enough together to have overlapping quantum-mechanical wavefunctions, superexchange does not require an overlap. Instead, the interaction has its basis in the ?virtual hopping? of electrons from one lattice site to another. This is a quantum mechanical process by which an electron can ?tunnel? through the region separating neighbouring lattice sites and join its neighbour, only for the electron or its neighbour to hop back a momen...
More About: Physics , Optical

Green tea may protect brain cells against Parkinson's disease
2007-12-20 23:56:00
Does the consumption of green tea, widely touted to have beneficial effects on health, also protect brain cells" Authors of a new study being published in the December 15th issue of Biological Psychiatry share new data that indicates this may be the case. The authors investigated the effects of green tea polyphenols, a group of naturally occurring chemical substances found in plants that have antioxidant properties, in an animal model of Parkinson?s disease. Parkinson?s disease is a progressive, degenerative disorder of the central nervous system, resulting from the loss of dopamine-producing brain cells, and there is presently no cure. According to Dr. Baolu Zhao, corresponding and senior author on this article, current treatments for Parkinson?s are associated with serious and important side effects. Their previous research has indicated that green tea possesses neuroprotective effects, leading Guo and colleagues to examine its effects specifically in Parkinson?s. The authors disc...
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Nondestructive Method May be Useful in Quantum Computing and Communications
2007-12-20 12:44:00
Physicists at the Commerce Department?s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have taken a significant step toward transforming entanglement?an atomic-scale phenomenon described by Albert Einstein as ?spooky action at a distance??into a practical tool. They demonstrated a method for refining entangled atom pairs (a process called purification) so they can be more useful in quantum computers and communications systems, emerging technologies that exploit the unusual rules of quantum physics for pioneering applications such as ?unbreakable? data encryption. The NIST work, reported in the Oct. 19, 2006, issue of Nature,* marks the first time atoms have been both entangled and subsequently purified; previously, this process had been carried out only with entangled photons (particles of light). The NIST demonstration also is the first time that scientists have been able to purify particles nondestructively. Direct measurement would destroy the delicate e...
More About: Physics , Computing , Communications , Quantum , Method

New Paper Reveals Nanoscale Details of Photolithography Process
2007-12-20 12:41:00
Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have made the first direct measurements of the infinitesimal expansion and collapse of thin polymer films used in the manufacture of advanced semiconductor devices. It?s a matter of only a couple of nanometers, but it can be enough to affect the performance of next-generation chip manufacturing. The NIST measurements, detailed in a new paper,* offer a new insight into the complex chemistry that enables the mass production of powerful new integrated circuits. The smallest critical features in memory or processor chips include transistor ?gates.? In today?s most advanced chips, gate length is about 45 nanometers, and the industry is aiming for 32-nanometer gates. To build the nearly one billion transistors in modern microprocessors, manufacturers use photolithography, the high-tech, nanoscale version of printing technology. The semiconductor wafer is coated with a thin film of photoresist, a polymer-based for...
More About: Paper , Details , Process

Conduction seen in DNA backbone
2007-12-20 12:35:00
Physicists in Japan have gained important new insights into how DNA might behave as an electrical conductor. Their discovery could help provide a better understanding of the role that conduction plays in how living cells detect and repair damaged DNA and could ultimately lead to strands of DNA being used in ?molecular electronics? technologies of the future. Biophysicists are keen to understand how electrons are conducted in DNA because conduction is thought to be an important mechanism by which enzymes recognize damaged DNA that, if not repaired, could lead to cancer. Some scientists also believe that conduction through DNA could protect the genomes of some organisms by transmitting the damage caused by oxidizing chemicals to certain locations on chromosomes where the damage causes the least harm. Tiny electronic circuits A better understanding of conduction could also lead to the engineering of new forms of DNA with properties more suited to electronic applications. DNA is an att...
More About: Physics

Photonic crystal bends light round corners
2007-12-19 23:10:00
Physicists in the US have created the first true 3D waveguide in a photonic crystal, enabling light to be transmitted around sharp bends. The research is a step towards optical integrated circuits and low-threshold lasers. A photonic crystal contains regularly alternating regions with high and low refractive indices. This structure creates a “photonic bandgap”, holding back light of certain frequencies while letting light of other frequencies through. An offshoot of this property is that photonic crystals can confine light to travel along predetermined paths inside waveguides. Such waveguides could be used to process optical signals in telecommunications, or to serve as small laser cavities that only require a low power to start lasing. Unfortunately, nearly all waveguides made so far have been 2D, and until now no-one has come up with a method that can create 3D waveguides at any place within a photonic crystal and with any dimensions so that useful devices can be created.Marki...
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Ampere could be defined one electron at a time
2007-12-19 23:05:00
There could soon be a new and more accurate method of defining the standard unit of current, the ampere, thanks to a tiny electronic device built by physicists in Finland and the US. The team, led by Jukka Pekola of the Helsinki University of Technology, has made a single-electron transistor that converts an oscillating voltage into a very precise electrical current. The ampere, volt and ohm are the three fundamental units of electricity. While physicists have devised modern microscopic definitions of the volt and ohm – through measurements of the Josephson voltage and quantum Hall resistance respectively – the most accurate measurements of the ampere are made using a refined version of a technique first developed in the 19th century. Today, the ampere is defined as the current which, when flowing through two parallel conductors one metre apart, exerts a certain force between the conductors. This is a macroscopic measurement involving a specific geometrical configuration of con...
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Earliest Stage of Planet Formation Dated
2007-12-19 22:33:00
UC Davis researchers have dated the earliest step in the formation of the solar system -- when microscopic interstellar dust coalesced into mountain-sized chunks of rock -- to 4,568 million years ago, within a range of about 2,080,000 years. UC Davis postdoctoral researcher Frederic Moynier, Qing-zhu Yin, assistant professor of geology, and graduate student Benjamin Jacobsen established the dates by analyzing a particular type of meteorite, called a carbonaceous chondrite, which represents the oldest material left over from the formation of the solar system. The physics and timing of this first stage of planet formation are not well understood, Yin said. So, putting time constraints on the process should help guide the physical models that could be used to explain it. In the second stage, mountain-sized masses grew quickly into about 20 Mars-sized planets and, in the third and final stage, these small planets smashed into each other in a series of giant collisions that left the plan...
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Traffic jam mystery solved by mathematicians
2007-12-19 19:18:00
Mathematicians from the University of Exeter have solved the mystery of traffic jams by developing a model to show how major delays occur on our roads, with no apparent cause. Many traffic jams leave drivers baffled as they finally reach the end of a tail-back to find no visible cause for their delay. Now, a team of mathematicians from the Universities of Exeter, Bristol and Budapest, have found the answer and published their findings in leading academic journal Proceedings of the Royal Society. The team developed a mathematical model to show the impact of unexpected events such as a lorry pulling out of its lane on a dual carriageway. Their model revealed that slowing down below a critical speed when reacting to such an event, a driver would force the car behind to slow down further and the next car back to reduce its speed further still. The result of this is that several miles back, cars would finally grind to a halt, with drivers oblivious to the reason for their delay. The mode...
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Concept of How Circadian Clock Functions
2007-12-19 11:34:00
Molecule identified which incorporates environmental information into biological clock. Scientists from the University of Cambridge have identified a molecule that may govern how the circadian clock in plants responds to environmental changes. The researchers have discovered that a signalling molecule, known to be important for environmental stress signalling in plants, also regulates their circadian clock. They believe that the molecule may therefore incorporate information about environmental changes into the biological clock that regulates the physiology of plants. The research dramatically changes our current understanding of the circadian clock and may have important implications for the agricultural community. In both plants and animals the operation of the circadian clock within the cell consists of feedback loops of gene expression, whereby a series of genes activate or repress one anoth...
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MIT creates oil-repelling materials
2007-12-19 11:18:00
MIT engineers have designed a class of material structures that can repel oils, a novel discovery that could have applications in aviation, space travel and hazardous waste cleanup. Such materials could be used to help protect parts of airplanes or rockets that are vulnerable to damage from being soaked in fuel, like rubber gaskets and o-rings."These are vulnerable points in many aerospace applications," said Robert Cohen, the St. Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering and an author of a paper on the work that appeared in the Dec. 7 issue of Science."It would be nice if you could spill gasoline on a fabric or a gasket or other surface and find that instead of spreading, it just rolled off," Cohen said. Creating a strongly oil-repelling, or "oleophobic" material, has been challenging for scientists, and there are no natural examples of such a material."Nature has developed a lot of methods for waterproofing, but not so much oil-proofing," said Gareth McKinley, MIT School of Engine...
More About: Materials

Laser beam 'fire hose' used to sort cells
2007-12-19 10:54:00
Separating particular kinds of cells from a sample could become faster, cheaper and easier thanks to a new system developed by MIT researchers that involves pushing up the cells with a laser beam "fire hose." The system, which can sort up to 10,000 cells on a conventional glass microscope slide, could enable a variety of biological research projects that might not have been feasible before, its inventors say. It could also find applications in clinical testing and diagnosis, genetic screening and cloning research, all of which require the selection of cells with particular characteristics for further testing.Joel Voldman, an associate professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Joseph Kovac, a graduate student in the department, developed the new system, which is featured as the cover story in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal Analytical Chemistry.Present methods allow cells to be sorted based on whether or not they emit fluorescent light when m...
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MIT to lead ambitious lunar mission
2007-12-19 10:49:00
MIT will lead a $375 million mission to map the moon's interior and reconstruct its thermal history, NASA announced this week.The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission will be led by MIT professor Maria Zuber and will be launched in 2011. It will put two separate satellites into orbit around the moon to precisely map variations in the moon's gravitational pull. These changes will reveal differences in density of the moon's crust and mantle, and can be used to answer fundamental questions about the moon's internal structure and its history of collisions with asteroids.The detailed information about lunar gravity will also significantly facilitate any future manned or unmanned missions to land on the moon. Such data will be used to program the descent to the surface to avoid a crash landing and will also help target desirable landing sites. Moreover, the mission's novel technology could eventually be used to explore other interesting worlds such as Mars."After ...
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Next-generation, high-performance processor unveiled
2007-12-18 21:24:00
The prototype for a revolutionary new general-purpose computer processor, which has the potential of reaching trillions of calculations per second, has been designed and built by a team of computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin.The new processor, known as TRIPS (Tera-op, Reliable, Intelligently adaptive Processing System), could be used to accelerate industrial, consumer and scientific computing.Professors Stephen Keckler, Doug Burger and Kathryn McKinley have been working on underlying technology that culminated in the TRIPS prototype for the past seven years. Their research team designed and built the hardware prototype chips and the software that runs on the chips."The TRIPS prototype is the first on a roadmap that will lead to ultra-powerful, flexible processors implemented in nanoscale technologies," said Burger, associate professor of computer sciences.TRIPS is a demonstration of a new class of processing architectures called Explicit Data Graph Execution (ED...
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Researchers discover second light-sensing system in human eye
2007-12-18 15:57:00
New research on blind subjects has bolstered evidence that the human eye has two separate light-sensing systems — one that perceives the familiar visual signals that allow us to see and a second, separate system that tells our body when it is day or night.Researchers have long known that the eye performed both functions but until recent years it had been thought that both vision and the management of the circadian rhythm that tells us when to be sleepy and when to be alert had been done all at once through the retina’s rods and cones that enable us to see. Beginning in the 1990s, however, research in animals and in healthy human subjects indicated that though vision was handled by the rods and cones, the signals that synchronize our body clock with the sun’s rising and setting are handled through a second system of light-sensitive cells, located at the back of the retina. These cells extend from the back of the eye into the brain’s hypothalamus region, which manages o...
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Evolution balances childbearing women
2007-12-18 14:50:00
More flexible spines have developed to change center of gravity By Amy Lavoie FAS Communications When a pregnant woman leans back, and shifts her weight to stand more comfortably, she is performing a motion that for millions of years has helped to compensate for the strain and weight of childbearing on the body. According to a new study from researchers at Harvard University and the University of Texas, Austin, women’s lower spines evolved to be more flexible and supportive than men’s to increase comfort and mobility during pregnancy, and to accommodate the special biology of carrying a baby for nine months while standing on two feet. The study, published in the Dec. 13 issue of Nature, was led by Katherine Whitcome, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Anthropology in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, with Daniel Lieberman, professor of anthropology at Harvard, and Liza Shapiro, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas, Aus...
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Nanoscience: Weak Force. Strong Effect.
2007-12-18 14:41:00
he van der Waals force, a weak attractive force, is solely responsible for binding certain organic molecules to metallic surfaces. In a model for organic devices, it is this force alone that binds an organic film to a metallic substrate. This data, recently published in Physical Review Letters, represents the latest findings from a National Research Network (NRN) supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF. These findings mean that numerous calculation models for the physical interactions between thin films and their carrier materials will need to be revised. Although they fulfil complex functions when used, for example, as computer chips, inorganic semiconductors have a simple construction that greatly limits their application. The same does not apply to semiconductors made of organic materials. Because organic molecules are extremely flexible, they can be used in a whole new range of applications. However, before this advantage can be exploited to the full, scientists need to have ...
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