Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the University of Tennessee (UT) and six collaborating universities have performed an unprecedented nuclear reaction experiment that explores the unique properties of the "doubly magic" radioactive isotope of 132Sn, or tin-132.The research, published in the journal Nature, is part of a broad scientific effort to understand nucleosynthesis, or the process by which the higher elements (those in the periodic table above iron) are created in the supernova explosions of stars. This research focused on the so-called r-process, responsible for the creation of about half of those heavy elements. This process involves interactions at very high energies of highly unstable and rare isotopes that do not naturally occur on earth, but that can be created in the laboratory.The research was performed at ORNL's Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility, a nuclear physics national user facility supported by the DOE Office of Science."Magic" nuclei define important way stations of relative stability as heavier elements are built up out of protons and neutrons (collectively known as nucleons). »

An innovative bicycle-powered water pump, created by a student at the University of Sheffield, has proved a huge success and is now in regular production in Guatemala, transforming the lives of rural residents.Jon Leary, 24, a MEng student in the University´s Department of Mechanical Engineering, took his bicycle machine design from a Steel City drawing board to the heart of Guatemala as part of his dissertation, which required him to `make something useful out of rubbish.´During his four month stint in Guatemala, Jon spent time improving the design for his bicibomba movil -- a mobile bicycle-powered water pump to be used for irrigation and general water distribution -- by working with the Guatemalan NGO Maya Pedal, who design and build a variety of weird and wonderful bicycle machines using abandoned bikes sent over from the US and Canada. Maya Pedal´s aim is to produce machines which can improve the daily lives of locals, without them having to resort to expensive electrical or environmentally damaging fossil fuelled machines. Their machines, which are human-powered sustainable energy sources, range from the bicilavadora (bicycle washing machine) to the bicimolino (corn grinder).Jon created the machine using a normal bike, which is plugged into a frame with an old electrical pump converted to a friction drive attached to the back wheel. The back tyre of the bike makes direct contact with the former armature of the motor, which is covered with rubber from an old tyre to give better grip. The machine was tested to a range of heights and on flat ground the pump can achieve a 40 litres per minute flow rate -- equal to about three normal showers. At 26 meters, a flow rate of 5 liters per minute can be achieved. »

How can European innovation be measured? This is the overarching question to be tackled by a group of prominent business innovators and economists put together by Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science. The right measurement indicator would help track Europe's progress on its quest to become a more innovative economy. The High Level Panel is chaired by Professor Andreu Mas-Colell, Secretary General of the European Research Council (ERC) and Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Spain. The role of the 13 members is to advise Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn and the European Commission on a suitable method (or methods) to gauge and measure Europe's innovation progress.During the Spring European Council (held on 25 and 26 March 2010), EU leaders (Heads of State and Government, the President of the European Council, and President of the European Commission) discussed the EU's new strategy for jobs and growth, known as 'Europe 2020'. The Council agreed on the main elements of the strategy (which will be formally adopted in June 2010) including the key 'headline' targets that constitute shared objectives and guide the action of both the EU and Member States. One of the targets is to improve the conditions for research and development (R&D) by bringing combined public and private investment levels in this sector to 3% of GDP (gross domestic product). As part of this target, EU leaders agreed that an indicator should be developed that reflects R&D and innovation intensity. Indeed, the Council concluded at the meeting that the success of the implementation of the new strategy rests largely on efficient monitoring mechanisms. They agreed that macroeconomic, structural and competitiveness developments under the new strategy will all be considered along with overall financial stability.  »

We know more about distant galaxies than we do about the interior of our own planet. However, by observing distant earthquakes, researchers at the University of Calgary have revealed new clues about the top of the Earth's core in a paper published in the May edition of the journal Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors.Knowledge of the composition and state in this zone is key to unraveling the source of the Earth's magnetic field and the formation of our planet."Some scientists have proposed a region of sediment accumulation at the top of the core, or even distinct liquid layers, but this study shows that the outer core is, in fact, well mixed," says professor Dave Eaton, co-author of the paper. "This inaccessible region is composed of molten iron, nickel and other as-yet unknown lighter elements such as silicon, sulfur, carbon or oxygen."To help try and determine the materials that make up the Earth's core, which is 2,891 km below the surface, Eaton and co-author Catrina Alexandrakis, University of Calgary PhD student, measured the seismic wave speed (speed of sound) at the top of Earth's core. »

When the first warm rays of springtime sunshine trigger a burst of new plant growth, it's almost as if someone flicked a switch to turn on the greenery and unleash a floral profusion of color. Opening a window into this process, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have deciphered the structure of a molecular "switch" much like the one plants use to sense light.Their findings, described online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the week of May 31, 2010, help explain how the switch works and could be used to design new ways to modify plant growth.Previous studies showed that the light-sensing structure, called a phytochrome, exists in two stable states. Each state is sensitive to a slightly different wavelength, or color, of light -- from red to "far red," which is close to the invisible infrared end of the light spectrum. As the phytochrome absorbs photons of one wavelength or the other, it changes shape and sends signals that help plants know when to flower, produce chlorophyll, and grow."The phytochrome is almost like nature's light switch," said Brookhaven biophysicist Huilin Li, who is also an associate professor at Stony Brook University and a lead author on the study. "Finding out how this switch is flipped on or off by a signal as subtle as a single photon of light is fascinating."As with all biological molecules, one key to the phytochrome's function is its structure. But scientists trying to get a molecular-level picture of a phytochrome have a formidable challenge: The phytochrome molecule is too dynamic to capture in a single image using techniques like x-ray crystallography. So, scientists have studied only the rigid and smaller pieces of the molecule, yielding detailed, but fragmented, information. »

A team of Duke University chemists has perfected a simple way to make tiny copper nanowires in quantity. The cheap conductors are small enough to be transparent, making them ideal for thin-film solar cells, flat-screen TVs and computers, and flexible displays."Imagine a foldable iPad," said Benjamin Wiley, an assistant professor of chemistry at Duke. His team reports its findings online in Advanced Materials.Nanowires made of copper perform better than carbon nanotubes, and are much cheaper than silver nanowires, Wiley said.The latest flat-panel TVs and computer screens produce images by an array of electronic pixels connected by a transparent conductive layer made from indium tin oxide (ITO). ITO is also used as a transparent electrode in thin-film solar cells.But ITO has drawbacks: it is brittle, making it unsuitable for flexible screens; its production process is inefficient; and it is expensive and becoming more so because of increasing demand."If we are going to have these ubiquitous electronics and solar cells," Wiley said, "we need to use materials that are abundant in the earth's crust and don't take much energy to extract." He points out that there are very few materials that are known to be both transparent and conductive, which is why ITO is still being used despite its drawbacks.However, Wiley's new work shows that copper, which is a thousand times more abundant than indium, can be used to make a film of nanowires that is both transparent and conductive. »

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's Division of Marine Operations, under an agreement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), sent a high-tech robotic submersible to the oily waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The goal is to collect information about the oil plume from the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig accident for NOAA.Although satellites and aircraft can help show the extent of the spill at the surface, MBARI's autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) will help researchers understand the nature and extent of any plumes of oil that may be hidden beneath the surface of the ocean.The MBARI AUV is being deployed from the NOAA Ship Gordon Gunter in Pascagoula, Mississippi. The Gordon Gunter departed from shore on Thursday, May 27th. The AUV was launched into the waters of the Gulf for the first time on May 28, 2010.Autonomous underwater vehicles are robotic, untethered submersibles that are programmed at the surface, then navigate through the water on their own, collecting data as they go. The MBARI AUV can measure physical characteristics of the water, such as temperature, salinity, and dissolved oxygen, detect chlorophyll from microscopic marine algae, and measure concentrations of small particles (or oil droplets) in the water. »

Analyzing trace atmospheric gases can now be considerably more precise with the help of a device that delivers stable and reliable power to the lasers used in gas sensors.The low-noise current controller was developed at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The technology was recently licensed to Bozeman, Montana-based Wavelength Electronics Inc. by Battelle, which operates PNNL for DOE."Low-noise current controllers open up new ways for us to analyze trace gases," said Matthew Taubman, a PNNL scientist who developed the device. "Now we can evaluate significantly smaller gas concentrations."Scientists often analyze atmospheric gas concentrations with laser-based sensors. Researchers sample air at sites of interest, such as on the ground near power plants or at high altitudes from airplanes. The sensor instrument then directs a laser through the sample. Based on how much laser light is absorbed by the sample, scientists can determine the specific gases present and their concentrations.But smaller concentrations of certain gases can be challenging to analyze. One particular problem occurs when "noises," or random fluctuations, exist in a laser's wavelength and line width. Such noise prevents researchers from making precise readings. »

Graphane is the material of choice for physicists on the cutting edge of materials science, and Rice University researchers are right there with the pack -- and perhaps a little ahead.Researchers mentored by Boris Yakobson, a Rice professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of chemistry, have discovered the strategic extraction of hydrogen atoms from a two-dimensional sheet of graphane naturally opens up spaces of pure graphene that look -- and act -- like quantum dots.That opens up a new world of possibilities for an ever-shrinking class of nanoelectronics that depend on the highly controllable semiconducting properties of quantum dots, particularly in the realm of advanced optics.The theoretical work by Abhishek Singh and Evgeni Penev, both postdoctoral researchers in co-author Yakobson's group, was published online in the journal ACS Nano and will be on the cover of the print version in June. Rice was recently named the world's No. 1 institution for materials science research by a United Kingdom publication.raphene has become the Flat Stanley of materials. The one-atom-thick, honeycomb-like form of carbon may be two-dimensional, but it seems to be everywhere, touted as a solution to stepping beyond the limits of Moore's Law.Graphane is simply graphene modified by hydrogen atoms added to both sides of the matrix, which makes it an insulator. While it's still technically only a single atom thick, graphane offers great possibilities for the manipulation of the material's semiconducting properties. »

A team of researchers at the University of Miami (UM) has developed a computer model for finding and projecting in time sunken oil masses on the bottom of bays, after an oil spill. The unique model can be used in oil spill planning, response, and recovery applications."Sunken oil is difficult to 'see' because sensing techniques show only a small space at a point in time. Moreover, the oil may re-suspend and sink, with changes in salinity, sediment load, and temperature, making fate and transport models difficult to deploy and adjust," says James Englehardt, UM professor of environmental engineering in the College of Engineering and team leader for the project. "For these reasons, we have developed a unique approach to the problem, bridging sampling plan techniques with pollutant transport modeling, to create models of sunken oil.The model was developed for the Emergency Response Division of NOAA/NOS/OR&R (NOAA's Ocean Service Office of Response and Restoration), in Seattle, and the project was funded by the Coastal Response Research Center, University of New Hampshire.The two-year project had three main objectives: compile and summarize data on the occurrence of sunken oil, directed by the project team including end users and NOAA liaison; develop a 2-D multimodal predictive Bayesian Gaussian model of sunken oil locations across a bay to accept spatial field data and hydrodynamic information and forecast sunken oil locations in time; and verify the model versus sunken oil data, as possible, and simulated datasets. »