What actually happens if you sit in front of a laboratory particle beam accelerator? Well, you can try and find out, but I would suggest to have a look at this video first, which graphically ilustrates what happens. Very insightful. Also, you should keep in mind that these kind of particles are seen regularly in space. An effective way of dealing with them (using electromagnets) has been proposed, but is still in research. Enjoy!

This little bugger, can hover using multiple jets. The idea is, that eventually it may be able to fight off incoming missiles by using kinetic energy alone. Probably, they'll run in front of the missile or something. They are cool!

Somewhere in the future it is possible to see flying robots flown by fruit flies! It seems there is some use for them, after all...Enjoy!

While filming out a window, a lightning bolt strikes a nearby tree. The slow motion reply shows the beauty of the lightning strike going through the tree. This is the reason why you shouldn't be caught under a tree during a storm. The researchers say that the safest place to be is...yes...your car! That's because you're in a Faraday cage!

It takes just a few hours for the ants to live nothing more than the lizard's bones. Wow! Amazingly fast Probably the researcher didn;t feed them in quite some time

This video was captured by a nature research vessel south-west of the Japanese coast. The fish flew for 45 seconds, before going back in the water, surpassing the 42 seconds that was registered in the '20s by an American researcher. It's amazing to see evolution in action! Let's drink a beer for Darwin, because he deserves it!

The particles of cobalt-chromium can cause DNA damage even if they do not come physically into contact with the cells. The nano-particles manage to damage the DNA of cells protected by a barrier made up of cellular membranes, without physically entering into contact with the cell, but rather through a multitude of chemical signals. This was found in a study coordinated at the Bristol Implant Research Center, proving that it brings out a new risk associated with nanotechnology, but also the opportunity to exploit this behavior in an innovative way. Nano-particles are now widely used. In surgery, for example, are an integral part of prostheses and implants. The research conducted so far on the risks of nanoparticles, however, relates mainly to the effects of direct exposure, while very little is known about what can cause the indirect exposure. In the new study, researchers have wondered if a barrier device was able to protect cells from the effects of nano-particles consisting of chromium and cobalt in the tissues of the clothes and orthopedic implants. The researchers interposed a barrier between nanoparticles formed out of multilayer chromium-cobalt (in quantities thousands of times greater than those with whom we come in contact normally) and a culture of human fibroblasts (connective tissue cells). Although nano-particles have not managed to cross the membrane, the fibroblasts had DNA mutations which were ten times more than the control fibroblasts. According to scholars, the effect is due to chemical signals between the cell membrane and fibroblasts. If the lines of communication between them are broken, the rate of DNA damage returned to normal.

This study researched killing cancer cells with nano-magnets, with the same principle as a microwave oven. The study of nano-particles applied to biomedicine continues to give interesting results, as research is still in its infancy. Through their work, the chemists from the university of Cagliari are now investigating some of the possibilities opened by this field. One is to use magnetic particles to convey the drugs only to the diseased cells, the other is to drive up the tumor and then force them to oscillate under the control of a variable magnetic field, thereby heating the target cells, just like a microwave oven does with the water molecules contained in food. This second mechanism exploits hyperthermia. It appears that cancer cells can be destroyed by beeing brought to a temperature of 42.5 degrees Celsius for about half an hour. In order arrive at the place desired, the particles must be incorporated into liposomes, hollow microspheres formed by lipid bilayers (for which reason they are called "magneto-liposomes"), which are able to overcome the barrier of cells. They must have a diameter of about 20 nanometers. Larger could indeed block blood vessels, while smaller particles may be "eaten" by macrophage cells which are in charge with the elimination of foreign bodies. Currently, the research team is working on the synthesis of particles and study of their structural and magnetic properties. Currently these are being built in oxide of iron or iron cobalt. The latter are more manoeuvrable, because their magnetic properties depend strongly on the direction along which the field is applied to (property known as magnetic anisotropy).

Can we act on stopping the process of infection, without the risk to develop strains resistant to antibiotics ? Small molecules that interrupt the chemical signals by which bacteria communicates by blocking the process of infection have been identified. The discovery, published in Molecular Cell, as well as representing a new option in the treatment of infections, reduces the risk of growth of bacteria strains resistant to antibiotics. Bacteria will exchange information with a system of intercellular communication, called quorum sensing, which allows them to perceive and respond to changes in density and to coordinate actions of the group. As soon as the conditions are favorable to population growth, for example if they are within a host, the bacteria sends chemical signals to molecules that bind to receptors inside: LuxR-type proteins or proteins of the type LuxN, located on membrane of each cell. In this way the infection proceeds without hitches. " Blocking the communications of the enemy has always been a winning weapon. The researchers searched the key to succeeding, and found in an old acquaintance. In a previous study Bassler and colleagues had discovered that a class of molecules called lactose acilomoserina (AHL), is able to compete with the signals acting on LuxN proteins, preventing them from binding to the receptor. In the recent study, researchers have realized that the AHL can also bind to proteins of the LuxR type. In this way was brought into light the AHL the ability to bind to both receptors, although the two proteins have two completely different structure and location mechanisms.

Cancer threatens the conservation of some wild species because it represents one of the top causes of death. This was also recently featured on the Discovery Channel. Cancer affects some animals with the same effect as in human beings, and could be the cause of extinction of some wild species. The researchers say the Society of Preservation of Fauna and Flora of New York have found an increase in cancer cases in wild animals in recent years. According to their findings, published in Nature Reviews Cancer, the species most affected are those at risk of extinction, like the Tasmanian devil, a small marsupial carnivore, already decimated in the late nineties by a rare form of transmissible cancer (the devil facial tumor). The cause is unknown, but it has been shown that malignant cells are able to spread among the samples and through bites during fights. To save the species, biologists are now isolating infected animals in zoos or reserves. Denise McAloose and Alisa Newton, authors of the study, have investigated the possible causes of cancer in different species, and have found a correlation between cancer and pollution. For example, for the living beluga in the estuary of the St. Lawrence River (Canada), a form of bowel cancer is the second leading cause of death. The culprit could be an organic compound (a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon that is found in oil, but also in municipal waste), already known to be carcinogenic for our species.

Italian researcher Alessandra Luchini wins the first edition of "The Prize Award” with a paper of a system to identify those molecules that signal the presence of a tumor (tumor markers) that are beyond the traditional methods of investigation. To do this requires making a hydrogel containing certain microscopic nano-spheres that once inserted in the samples of blood taken for analysis diagnostic trap some markers and protect them from deterioration. "These nano-spheres, made of the same plastic as hydrated soft contact lenses are equipped with special molecules that, once in the blood, snap-specific tumor markers and incorporate them. In this way, they protect them from enzymes that would otherwise deteriorate them. Usually blood tests fail to identify precisely because these markers are destroyed prematurely, " says researcher Alessandra Luchini. "The beauty of this system," says the researcher, "is that it does not need very sophisticated tools, which is simple and economical: with one hundred U.S. dollars we can make nano-spheres for more than two hundred patients." The new method is not going to replace the standard, but acts at a stage prior to analysis by providing a better quality.

Small robots that walk on water like insects? The kitchen table, the walls of a room or the arms of an armchair that are self-cleaning? Two phenomena that Xiao Cheng Zeng, a professor of chemistry at University of Nebraska in Lincoln (USA), considers possible in the near future, and based on the same characteristic: super hidrofobia. Thanks to the computational performance of the super computer of the Riken Institute in Japan, the researcher is able to reproduce the conditions that give the area the property is to "roll" away the drops of water. In nature this phenomenon is observed on the bristles of caterpillars or on lotus flowers, and allows insects that often are seen on ponds slip skate on water. As the authors of the study reported the caterpillars or insects skaters get the super hydrophobia surface through a "two-tier" surface which means a waxy base on which there are microscopic structures like hair, often covered in turn by smaller "hair". These gradients decrease the surface area in contact with the drop of water. The result is that the drop rolls instead of sliding, as it would be a hydrophobic surface.

Twenty years after the first partially successful attempt to cold fusion, a new experiment seems to have reopened the hopes of obtaining nuclear reactions at low energy (LENR low-energy nuclear reactions). This was announced by a team of researchers led by Pamela Mosier-Boss of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center San Diego (California), with a study presented at the annual meeting of American Chemical Society, the first visible evidence of the production of neutrons, the particles subatomic whose presence demonstrates the atomic reaction occurred. It was 1989 when Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons showed that it has obtained experimentally the Cold Fusion, arousing great outcry in the scientific community. Fusion is the reaction that takes place inside of stars, their source of energy, able to reproduce in the laboratory at room temperature this process would be an amazing achievement. Further research then disappointed initial expectations: the rare attempts (for example, those of 2000 and 2002) to reproduce the results of 1989 and have not convinced the path of nuclear reaction at low energy has not proved viable as an alternative to "clean" nuclear fission, which is based on the common operation of nuclear power.

The use of an organic material has been put in place a structure capable of transmitting data at rates eight times higher than those of traditional devices . The study of materials capable of transmitting data at ever higher speeds is the constant challenge of the technology of optical communications. The use of a new organic material, tested by a team of U.S. and European research coordinated by Ivan Biaggi of Lehigh University (United States), has enabled to achieve data transfers much higher than that obtained so far with traditional devices. The novelty lies in the combination of structures in silicon with organic material, identified by the initials Ddmebt . This is essentially a kind of "nonlinear" device, able to change its molecular structure to the passage of light, making it propagate at high speed. To minimize interference with the passage of data, researchers have vaporized the organic material and the deposit left on the rails of silicon and in the spaces between them. In this way, explain the authors, the molecules are deposited "like snowflakes", forming a highly homogeneous plastic. It is precisely in the interstices between the rails of silicon, filled with new material, that the light passes at high speed, allowing you to transmit data up to 170 Gigabit per second (with the traditional structures, which consist only of silicon, you can reach a maximum speed around 20-30 Gigabit per second). Combining silicon with an architecture was needed to channel and confine the flow of light within very small spaces (the guide of silicon is separated by a few tens of nanometers).

The new devices can operate at 30 degrees above zero, rather than less than 70. This is the characteristic of the new generation of semiconductors, researched at the Italian Institute for the Physics of Matter (INFM-CNR), and in the Ludwig Maximilian University in Monaco of Bavaria and the ETH Zurich (the study). Today there are two ways to record information on a medium: the electronic format, in which the binary language is the passage of electrons (the transistors) and magnetic (MRAM memory), more recently, in which the binary language is given by state of magnetization. To communicate these two systems could boost significantly the computational schemes, pending the distant quantum computer. Doubling the processing power and memory of a chip while maintaining the size, without the need to go in nano-scale (a scale, that is, a billionth of a meter) are just two of the technology that promises magnetic semiconductors suggest a near future. These devices were made over ten years ago, but so far required temperatures far below zero to work. The problem now seems outdated as the known semiconductors gallium arsenide containing traces of manganese, a metal which has ferromagnetic properties at around 200 degrees below zero. To increase the temperature threshold, above which the ferromagnetic behavior disappears, the researchers deposited on a semiconductor film of iron - metal known for its magnetic properties - the thickness of a few nanometers. Iron and manganese interacted so effectively that the new material, has a ferromagnetic behavior up to 30 degrees above zero, a jump of over a hundred degrees above the starting temperature. This result is a technological response parallel to that of the race to miniaturization and the research was selected the American Physical Society as one of the most important published in Physical Review Letters

A new instrument to simultaneously measure the magnetic field and the atomic structure of matter at the nanoscale has been developed. The applications of this are future generations of high-density memories Snapshots of the weakest and microscopic magnetic fields generated by just a few molecules of a nanometer (billionth of a meter). The researchers have obtained the S3 Center of the National Institute for the Physics of Matter (INFM-CNR) of Modena and the University of Modena . This is a scanning microscope combined with a new highly sensitive magnetic sensor. The microscope scans close with his point - made up of a few atoms - the area of the test and how it relates to the roughness with a resolution of several nanometers. Beside the point, the sensor records the magnetic field intensity, but with high detail ( millionth of a meter). In this way the researchers were able to get together for the first time, images of atomic structure and magnetic properties of a thin layer of nano-magnet on a support of silicon. "The microscope allows us to measure directly the properties of nano-molecular magnets on the surface, even at temperatures close to absolute zero, to minus 270 degrees," says Marco. "Above all," says the researcher, "it helps us to understand the magnetism on the molecular scale."

For the first time a gene was identified that allows the repair of damaged nerves in nematodes. The study is from Science Express. A gene that can stimulate the growth of nerve cells was first identified by researchers at the University of Utah (USA), thanks to cutting-edge experimental techniques and a huge genetic screening on a nematode (cylindrical or worm). The neurons, which in the embrio are able to regenerate, in adults have their capacity to "repair" reduced or absent. In other words, damage to the central nervous system (brain or spinal cord) and its consequences - paralysis, loss or reduction of cognitive faculties - are permanent. "In the past molecules have been identified that can inhibit the growth of neurons in different organisms," says the coordinator of research Michael Bastiani, "but their removal in the laboratory had no effect. That is why we went to look for those genes that can stimulate rather than inhibit, the regeneration of nerve. " Taking as a experimental model flat worms (Caenorhabditis elegans), biologists have searched for the genes that trigger the regrowth of motor (neurons that "command" voluntary muscles): in practice, with an experimental technique called RNA interference to "shut down ", one by one, 5000 on 20,000 genes in the DNA of worms (genes similar are also present in humans). The analysis led to the identification of dlk-1, which appears to play a key role in the regeneration of nerve tissue, and three other genes responsible for the formation of axons (parts of the neuron that conduct electrical signal). The researchers found that in nematodes, the gene dlk-1 not only triggers a chain of events known as "Map kinase" behind the growth of neurons, but also that their regeneration can be increased or decreased by stimulating the gene to produce amounts more or less high of the protein dlk-1.

The molecule slows the proliferation of tumor cells while giving the time needed to repair the damage to their DNA. The discovery, made by Italian researchers IEA, is published in Nature. The secret of immortality of cancer stem cells - those that feed it and cause relapses because they're immune to chemotherapy - was unveiled. Their strength is the p21 protein that slows the proliferation, giving them the time needed to repair damage to DNA. In practice, it is as if these cells were able to rejuvenate indefinitely: no age, and thus do not die. By blocking the production of p21, however, you can make them vulnerable and hit the tumor at the root. The research was conducted in the laboratories of the European Institute of Oncology (IFOM-IEO) in collaboration with the universities of Milan and Perugia, and was published this week in Nature. The cells age and die because they accumulate damage and mistakes borne of DNA during cell divisions. To understand why this does not happen in a cancerous stem cell, the researchers observed what happens to a staminale "normal" when you alter one of the genes (oncogenes) that cause cancer (in this case, the acute myeloid leukemia). The study revealed that oncogenes stimulate the activity of another gene, called p21, and thus the production of the corresponding protein, whose effect is to slow the proliferation. In essence, these cells have much more time to repair other damaged DNA, and remain young and active, immune to chemotherapy drugs because they recognize and affect only the cells in rapid proliferation.

The switch that turns off and on to command the superconducting property of the new device is a trivial electric field. In practice, what has been done by Andrea Ankle and colleagues at the University of Geneva in the first superconducting transistors. The operation, represents a milestone of applied physics and paves the way for the development of a new generation of microchips - and therefore computers - much faster than at present. To understand how and why the device is considered so promising it must be from another discovery, made last year by the same group of university research in Switzerland and published in Science. In one study, physicists have created a single crystal in which two metal oxides (strontium titanate and lanthanum aluminate) are separated. Between these two materials, researchers have found a layer of free electrons (electronic cloud) and 0.3 Kelvin - that is just above absolute zero - traveling without any resistance. At that temperature, the crystal becomes a superconductor. Scientists have now discovered how to turn off and turn on the superconductivity of this crystal at will, or modules, simply by applying an electric field to the point of contact between the two oxides. The result is a version of superconductive field effect transistors (FET) devices known in applied physics, able to switch from one state to a semiconductor insulator, and basic digital information in electronics (the fact that the current can pass or not is used as a binary 1-0 to store information). As the field effect transistors is a semiconductor, however, it always has resistance to the passage of current. This means that the speed at which you can get the electrons when the device is "on" is limited which means heat develops beyond a certain limit. This side effect is damaging the transistor. A superconducting transistor, however, can pass electrons (and record information) much more quickly, as it does not oppose any resistance to the passage of current and, therefore, not heat. There remains the problem of extremely low temperatures required for superconductivity. A limit that research is a long time trying to overcome.

A highly resistant and self lubricating material has been discovered, thanks to the formation of an oxide surface that captures the water vapor Hard as diamond and slippery as a sheet of ice. The secret of the extraordinary characteristics of Bam, a special alloy-ceramics produced by blending a mix of boron, aluminum and magnesium (AlMgB14) with titanium boride (TiB2), was unveiled by researchers of Ames Laboratory, in Iowa (Usa ), who had accidentally discovered it a decade ago. In 1999, researchers tried to obtain a substance capable of generating electricity if overheated, when, unexpectedly, found in the hands a league owned by the exceptional and seemingly inexplicable. The Bam is tough, despite possessing a complex structure, asymmetrical and not compact. Moreover, says Alan Russel of Iowa University, it is inherently slippery. One characteristic that, according to researchers, could be due to the formation on the surface of boron oxide, which can attract water molecules present in the air.