Lifeboat Foundation

How does the brain retrieve memories, articulate words, and focus attention? Recent advances have provided a newfound ability to decipher, sharpen, and adjust electrical signals relevant to speech, attention, memory and emotion. Join Brian Greene and leading neuroscientists György Buzsáki, Edward Chang, Michael Halassa, Michael Kahana and Helen Mayberg for a thrilling exploration of how we’re learning to read and manipulate the mind.

The Kavli Prize recognizes scientists for their seminal advances in astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience — topics covered in the series “The Big, the Small, and the Complex.” This series is sponsored by The Kavli Foundation and The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Continue reading “Decoding the Brain” »

Was divided, one half jointly to Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever ‘for their experimental discoveries regarding tunneling phenomena in semiconductors and superconductors, respectively’ and the other half to Brian David Josephson ‘for his theoretical predictions of the properties of a supercurrent through a tunnel barrier, in particular those phenomena which are generally known as the Josephson effects’

Physicists are learning more about the bizarre behavior of “strange metals,” which operate outside the normal rules of electricity.

Theoretical physicist Yashar Komijani, an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati, contributed to an international experiment using a strange metal made from an alloy of ytterbium, a rare earth metal. Physicists in a lab in Hyogo, Japan, fired radioactive gamma rays at the strange metal to observe its unusual electrical behavior.

Led by Hisao Kobayashi with the University of Hyogo and RIKEN, the study was published in the journal Science. The experiment revealed unusual fluctuations in the strange metal’s electrical charge.

Physicists at the University of Cincinnati have contributed to an international experiment on strange metals made from an alloy of ytterbium, a rare earth metal. The study involved firing radioactive gamma rays at the strange metal to observe its unusual electrical behavior. The experiment revealed unusual fluctuations in the strange metal’s electrical charge, furthering the understanding of the bizarre behavior of strange metals that operate outside the normal rules of electricity.

International team finds unusual electrical behavior in material that holds promise for new technology.

Physicists at the University of Cincinnati (UC) are learning more about the bizarre behavior of “strange metals,” which operate outside the normal rules of electricity.

Using “refreshingly old” tools, mathematicians resolved a 50-year-old conjecture about how to categorize important functions called modular forms, with consequences for number theory and theoretical physics.

Tracing 13 billion years of history by the light of ancient quasars.

Has the quest for room temperature superconductivity finally succeeded? Researchers at the University of Rochester (U of R), who previously were forced to retract a controversial claim of room temperature superconductivity at high pressures, are back with an even more spectacular claim. This week in they report a new material that superconducts at room temperature—and not much more than ambient pressures.

“If this is correct, it’s completely revolutionary,” says James Hamlin, a physicist at the University of Florida who was not involved with the work. A room temperature superconductor would usher in a century-long dream. Existing superconductors require expensive and bulky chilling systems to conduct electricity frictionlessly, but room temperature materials could lead to hyperefficient electricity grids and computer chips, as well as the ultrapowerful magnets needed for levitating trains and fusion power.

But given the U of R group’s recent retraction, many physicists won’t be easily convinced. “I think they will have to do some real work and be really open for people to believe it,” Hamlin says. Jorge Hirsch, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego, and a vociferous critic of the earlier work, is even more blunt. “I doubt [the new result], because I don’t trust these authors.”

In a historic achievement, University of Rochester researchers have created a superconducting material at both a temperature and pressure low enough for practical applications.

“With this material, the dawn of ambient superconductivity and applied technologies has arrived,” according to a team led by Ranga Dias, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and physics. In a paper in Nature, the researchers describe a nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride (NDLH) that exhibits superconductivity at 69 degrees Fahrenheit (20.5 degrees Celsius) and 10 kilobars (145,000 pounds per square inch, or psi) of pressure.

Continue reading “Viable superconducting material created at low temperature and low pressure” »

Ktsimage/iStock.

“With this material, the dawn of ambient superconductivity and applied technologies has arrived,” said the press release, which was published today by a team led by Ranga Dias, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and physics.