68 posts · 74,418 views
I am Managing Editor for the physical sciences of the science magazine Nature Communications and freelance science writer. The views represented on my blog are my own.
All That Matters
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- April 1, 2013
- 12:47 PM
- 132 views
X-ray crystallography made easy
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
Sixty years ago this month Nature published the famous paper by Watson and Crick solving the structure of DNA. At the time many researchers pursued this goal, made difficult by the complexity of the DNA itself. A key contribution to the solution of the puzzle was the x-ray diffraction data provided by Rosalind Franklin. Indeed, without [...]... Read more »
WATSON, J., & CRICK, F. (1953) Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid. Nature, 171(4356), 737-738. DOI: 10.1038/171737a0
FRANKLIN, R., & GOSLING, R. (1953) Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate. Nature, 171(4356), 740-741. DOI: 10.1038/171740a0
Inokuma, Y., Yoshioka, S., Ariyoshi, J., Arai, T., Hitora, Y., Takada, K., Matsunaga, S., Rissanen, K., & Fujita, M. (2013) X-ray analysis on the nanogram to microgram scale using porous complexes. Nature, 495(7442), 461-466. DOI: 10.1038/nature11990
- January 13, 2013
- 07:44 AM
- 156 views
Measuring mass by telling the time
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
How do you measure mass with high precision? This is not an easy question, as it is very difficult to measure the weight of something with the same ultra-high precision with which atomic clocks measure time. To this day, the kilogram is defined by a piece of metal made of platinum and iridium that is stored in Paris. [...]... Read more »
Lan, S., Kuan, P., Estey, B., English, D., Brown, J., Hohensee, M., & Muller, H. (2013) A Clock Directly Linking Time to a Particle's Mass. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.1230767
- January 3, 2013
- 10:18 PM
- 164 views
Atoms at negative absolute temperatures
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
Usually we tend to think about temperature as being related to the motion of atoms. At lower temperatures, atomic motions slow down. Absolute zero, defined as zero Kelvin or −273.15 degrees Celsius, then is the point where all atomic motion stops. But what comes beyond that, does something like a negative absolute temperature exist? Indeed, as Ulrich Schneider [...]... Read more »
Braun, S., Ronzheimer, J., Schreiber, M., Hodgman, S., Rom, T., Bloch, I., & Schneider, U. (2013) Negative Absolute Temperature for Motional Degrees of Freedom. Science, 339(6115), 52-55. DOI: 10.1126/science.1227831
- December 11, 2012
- 07:53 PM
- 212 views
Samarium hexaboride
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
There is a lot of buzz in the physics community about a new topological insulator: samarium hexaboride, SmB6. The reason why any major discovery about topological insulators seems to be big news is that these materials have some unique electrical characteristics that make them not only very interesting from a fundamental point of view but [...]... Read more »
Steven Wolgast, Cagliyan Kurdak, Kai Sun, J. W. Allen, Dae-Jeong Kim, & Zachary Fisk. (2012) Discovery of the First Topological Kondo Insulator: Samarium Hexaboride. -. arXiv: 1211.5104v2
Xiaohang Zhang, N. P. Butch, P. Syers, S. Ziemak, Richard L. Greene, & J. Paglione. (2012) Hybridization, Correlation, and In-Gap States in the Kondo Insulator SmB6. -. arXiv: 1211.5532v1
J. Botimer, D. J. Kim, S. Thomas, T. Grant, Z. Fisk, & Jing Xia. (2012) Robust Surface Hall Effect and Nonlocal Transport in SmB6: Indication for an Ideal Topological Insulator. -. arXiv: 1211.6769v1
- November 19, 2012
- 12:15 PM
- 224 views
Graphene’s new look
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
It’s been only a week ago that I wrote about the increasing competition for graphene. But as I said then, there are still some exciting advances based on graphene. An example is photonics, which is an area where traditionally graphene perhaps has not been as strong as in electronics. A reason for this is that being only a [...]... Read more »
Nair, R., Blake, P., Grigorenko, A., Novoselov, K., Booth, T., Stauber, T., Peres, N., & Geim, A. (2008) Fine Structure Constant Defines Visual Transparency of Graphene. Science, 320(5881), 1308-1308. DOI: 10.1126/science.1156965
Fei, Z., Rodin, A., Andreev, G., Bao, W., McLeod, A., Wagner, M., Zhang, L., Zhao, Z., Thiemens, M., Dominguez, G.... (2012) Gate-tuning of graphene plasmons revealed by infrared nano-imaging. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/nature11253
Lee, S., Choi, M., Kim, T., Lee, S., Liu, M., Yin, X., Choi, H., Lee, S., Choi, C., Choi, S.... (2012) Switching terahertz waves with gate-controlled active graphene metamaterials. Nature Materials, 11(11), 936-941. DOI: 10.1038/nmat3433
Grigorenko, A., Polini, M., & Novoselov, K. (2012) Graphene plasmonics. Nature Photonics, 6(11), 749-758. DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2012.262
- November 12, 2012
- 07:07 PM
- 184 views
Competition in flatland
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
Move over graphene, there is competition in town. A new type of two-dimensional materials – with the far less appealing family name, transition metal dichalcogenides – are increasingly gaining attention. Well, at least they’re giving it a shot. Graphene, a sheet of carbon atoms only one atomic layer thick, still has plenty going for itself [...]... Read more »
Wang, Q., Kalantar-Zadeh, K., Kis, A., Coleman, J., & Strano, M. (2012) Electronics and optoelectronics of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides. Nature Nanotechnology, 7(11), 699-712. DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2012.193
- November 8, 2012
- 08:22 AM
- 157 views
The ultimate optical surface devices
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
Ocean waves are pretty relentless when hitting on a beach, and it is not always easy to protect beaches from erosion. For example, if you were to put pillars of a few centimetres in diameter into the water it won’t stop the waves or alter their behaviour. The waves will continue to hit the beach as ever. In optics, [...]... Read more »
Yu, N., Genevet, P., Kats, M., Aieta, F., Tetienne, J., Capasso, F., & Gaburro, Z. (2011) Light Propagation with Phase Discontinuities: Generalized Laws of Reflection and Refraction. Science, 334(6054), 333-337. DOI: 10.1126/science.1210713
Aieta, F., Genevet, P., Kats, M., Yu, N., Blanchard, R., Gaburro, Z., & Capasso, F. (2012) Aberration-Free Ultrathin Flat Lenses and Axicons at Telecom Wavelengths Based on Plasmonic Metasurfaces. Nano Letters, 12(9), 4932-4936. DOI: 10.1021/nl302516v
Kats, M., Blanchard, R., Genevet, P., & Capasso, F. (2012) Nanometre optical coatings based on strong interference effects in highly absorbing media. Nature Materials. DOI: 10.1038/nmat3443
- May 3, 2012
- 07:50 AM
- 782 views
High-risk research can’t be kept secret forever
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
Should scientific journals publish high-risk scientific research that could in the wrong hands be disastrous for us all? Although it might be sensible to keep certain results secret for a while, I argue that eventually it does not make sense to withhold results in the long-term. What is this all about? Yesterday saw the publication [...]... Read more »
Imai, M., Watanabe, T., Hatta, M., Das, S., Ozawa, M., Shinya, K., Zhong, G., Hanson, A., Katsura, H., Watanabe, S.... (2012) Experimental adaptation of an influenza H5 HA confers respiratory droplet transmission to a reassortant H5 HA/H1N1 virus in ferrets. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/nature10831
Editorial. (2012) Publishing risky research. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/485005a
- February 19, 2012
- 01:45 PM
- 1,135 views
Transistors reach the single atom limit
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
When Gordon Moore made his observation in 1965 that the number of transistors integrated on a single silicon chip is doubling roughly every two years, the only logical end point for such a trend would be a transistor made from a single atom. This point has now been reached. Writing in Nature Nanotechnology, Michelle Simmons from the [...]... Read more »
Fuechsle, M., Miwa, J., Mahapatra, S., Ryu, H., Lee, S., Warschkow, O., Hollenberg, L., Klimeck, G., & Simmons, M. (2012) A single-atom transistor. Nature Nanotechnology. DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2012.21
- February 8, 2012
- 01:01 PM
- 898 views
Coaxial ‘cables’ make great lasers, too
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
When Oliver Heaviside invented the coaxial cable in 1880 he could not have foreseen the implications of his idea on modern nanotechnology. His coaxial cables consist of three layers: an inner metallic core, surrounded by an insulator, surrounded by a metallic layer on the outside. The benefit of this design is that the outer metallic [...]... Read more »
Khajavikhan, M., Simic, A., Katz, M., Lee, J., Slutsky, B., Mizrahi, A., Lomakin, V., & Fainman, Y. (2012) Thresholdless nanoscale coaxial lasers. Nature, 482(7384), 204-207. DOI: 10.1038/nature10840
- February 6, 2012
- 08:39 AM
- 461 views
A perfect couple for designing chemical reactions
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
We are all familiar with the basic ways in which light interacts with matter, when light absorption causes atoms to move and creates heat, or when light gets absorbed by the outer electrons of atoms so that they move into energetically excited states, which is how electricity in solar cells is created. Common to both [...]... Read more »
Schwartz, T., Hutchison, J., Genet, C., & Ebbesen, T. (2011) Reversible Switching of Ultrastrong Light-Molecule Coupling. Physical Review Letters, 106(19). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.196405
Hutchison, J., Schwartz, T., Genet, C., Devaux, E., & Ebbesen, T. (2012) Modifying Chemical Landscapes by Coupling to Vacuum Fields. Angewandte Chemie International Edition. DOI: 10.1002/anie.201107033
- January 15, 2012
- 02:09 PM
- 694 views
Shrinking magnetic storage devices
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
I now finally got the time to follow-up on last week’s paper in Science by Andreas Heinrich‘s group at IBM on magnetic storage elements that are only a few atoms in size. There have been a few misconceptions in some of the news reports with some being plainly wrong (‘smallest storage device ever made’), and many didn’t [...]... Read more »
Loth, S., Baumann, S., Lutz, C., Eigler, D., & Heinrich, A. (2012) Bistability in Atomic-Scale Antiferromagnets. Science, 335(6065), 196-199. DOI: 10.1126/science.1214131
- January 4, 2012
- 01:04 PM
- 948 views
The cloak that hides events in time
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
Devices that conceal objects from an observer are called cloaks. Conceptually, the idea of cloaking devices has its roots in science fiction, but such devices have indeed been demonstrated in the past few years. These cloaks are based on tiny structures that are able to bend light on predetermined paths as it passes through the [...]... Read more »
Fridman, M., Farsi, A., Okawachi, Y., & Gaeta, A. (2012) Demonstration of temporal cloaking. Nature, 481(7379), 62-65. DOI: 10.1038/nature10695
Boyd, R., & Shi, Z. (2012) Optical physics: How to hide in time. Nature, 481(7379), 35-36. DOI: 10.1038/481035a
- December 12, 2011
- 10:09 AM
- 3,689 views
The Beethoven connection
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
Symphonies are some of the most complex musical pieces. They involve different instruments, each with their own unique sound, and each instruments section playing their own tunes. Yet, what are symphonies in comparison to the complexity of life? Proteins for example, they are made of a limited number of building blocks, amino acids, but take [...]... Read more »
Spivak, D., Giesa, T., Wood, E., & Buehler, M. (2011) Category Theoretic Analysis of Hierarchical Protein Materials and Social Networks. PLoS ONE, 6(9). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0023911
Giesa, T., Spivak, D., & Buehler, M. (2011) Reoccurring Patterns in Hierarchical Protein Materials and Music: The Power of Analogies. BioNanoScience, 1(4), 153-161. DOI: 10.1007/s12668-011-0022-5
- December 2, 2011
- 07:22 AM
- 651 views
Whither organic solar cells?
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
This week I am attending the Materials Research Society Fall meeting in Boston, where there is a big focus on energy. Catalysis, fuel cells, batteries, solar cells, solar fuel, you name it. And I had a discussion with some researchers from the inorganic solar cell community, who asked me what is with the organic solar cells? [...]... Read more »
Green, M., Emery, K., Hishikawa, Y., Warta, W., & Dunlop, E. (2011) Solar cell efficiency tables (Version 38). Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications, 19(5), 565-572. DOI: 10.1002/pip.1150
- November 27, 2011
- 08:36 AM
- 1,155 views
Electrons out of balance
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
Apply an electric field to a material, and its positive and negative charges will separate, creating an electric polarization. This is the fundamental effect behind capacitors used in electronics as well as in ferroelectrics used in some computer memories. In the latter case, to achieve a permanent electric polarization, the positive and negative charges need [...]... Read more »
Li, W., Pohl, T., Rost, J., Rittenhouse, S., Sadeghpour, H., Nipper, J., Butscher, B., Balewski, J., Bendkowsky, V., Low, R.... (2011) A Homonuclear Molecule with a Permanent Electric Dipole Moment. Science, 334(6059), 1110-1114. DOI: 10.1126/science.1211255
- November 21, 2011
- 06:00 AM
- 1,390 views
Science doesn’t shoot from the hip
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
The young Max Planck, when completing his high school degree, asked a professor of physics at the University of Munich, Philipp von Jolly, whether he should study physics. He got the famous answer that this wouldn’t make much sense, because physics is an almost fully mature science with not much to discover. (If you happen [...]... Read more »
Matthew F. Pusey, Jonathan Barrett, & Terry Rudolph. (2011) The quantum state cannot be interpreted statistically. -. arXiv: 1111.3328v1
The OPERA Collaboration. (2011) Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam. arXiv. arXiv: 1109.4897v2
- November 18, 2011
- 08:07 AM
- 1,307 views
Plucking light out of space
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
You may imagine vacuum as complete emptiness, as the very definition of nothing. But that’s not the case at all. Vacuum is humming with activity, as has now been demonstrated impressively in a study by researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Sweden, RIKEN in Japan and other institutions. They have created light basically [...]... Read more »
Wilson, C., Johansson, G., Pourkabirian, A., Simoen, M., Johansson, J., Duty, T., Nori, F., & Delsing, P. (2011) Observation of the dynamical Casimir effect in a superconducting circuit. Nature, 479(7373), 376-379. DOI: 10.1038/nature10561
- November 17, 2011
- 06:42 AM
- 533 views
The reluctance of science to open up
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
I finally had the chance to read Michael Nielsen‘s book ‘Reinventing discovery‘ - a must read for anyone interested in scientific discovery. Why? Well, because the closed, individual way in which we organize science today in many ways is hampering progress and may eventually become a thing of the past. If you are in science, why did you [...]... Read more »
Hardin, G. (1968) The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, 162(3859), 1243-1248. DOI: 10.1126/science.162.3859.1243
- October 18, 2011
- 08:14 AM
- 1,126 views
Through the tangled web
by Joerg Heber in All That Matters
Understanding the properties of something chaotic like a bowl of spaghetti may seem a daunting task. But that’s what Garry Rumbles from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the USA, Natalie Stingelin from Imperial College London in the UK, and coworkers are trying to do. With success. They study polymers – long spaghetti-like molecules made of repeating atomic subunits [...]... Read more »
Reid, O., Malik, J., Latini, G., Dayal, S., Kopidakis, N., Silva, C., Stingelin, N., & Rumbles, G. (2011) The influence of solid-state microstructure on the origin and yield of long-lived photogenerated charge in neat semiconducting polymers. Journal of Polymer Science Part B: Polymer Physics. DOI: 10.1002/polb.22379
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