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Search and Discovery
Binary Quasicrystals Discovered That Are Stable and Icosahedral
You don’t need three chemical elements to make thermodynamically stable quasicrystals. Two will do.
Hydrodynamics May Explain Like-Charge Colloidal Attraction
As two like-charged particles are repelled by a nearby charged wall, the resulting fluid flow can make them move toward each other.
New Printing Technologies Raise Hopes for Cheap Plastic Electronics
Inkjets and rubber stamps just might replace expensive photolithography steps in the printing of polymer circuits. If so, we may one day read our newspapers off reloadable, flexible plastic sheets.
Issues and Events
California Seeds Science Institutes with $300 million
New nanoscience, wireless communications, and quantitative biology institutes are intended to forge collaboration among scientific disciplines and with industry, as well as fuel California’s future economy.
Some Physicists Urge Changes in DOE Science
A group of leading physicists say physical sciences aren’t properly recognized or supported by federal government policy-makers.
Articles
Superfluid Helium Droplets: An Ultracold Nanolaboratory
The unique environment in liquid helium droplets opens up new opportunities for molecular spectroscopy and for probing superfluid phenomena on the atomic scale.
Physics for Profit and Fun
Developing products for industry can be intellectually challenging and financially rewarding, but it’s not without its frustrations.
Wolfgang Pauli
Max Born thought that Pauli was, perhaps, an even greater scientist than Einstein. “But he was a completely different type of man,” wrote Born, “who, in my eyes, did not attain Einstein’s greatness.”