By James Michell Crow An international team of researchers based in Colorado has captured the movements of single electrons in a chemical bond, using ultra-short x-ray pulses. The technique, which allows them to follow the movement of electrons across solar cells and other materials, was presented at the Australian Institute of Physics conference in Melbourne.

By Vivien Lee The danger of sunburn for construction workers is just as high in autumn and winter as in spring and summer, a researcher told the Australian Institute of Physics Congress in Melbourne. Just as skiers need to be careful of UV rays reflected off snow, she said, construction workers run the risk of…

By Vivien Lee It took less than 19 days of smashing lead ions together at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland for physicists confirm a new state of matter, the Australian Institute of Physics Congress was told in Melbourne. What the huge particle detector attached to the collider, known as the ATLAS experiment, has found…

Kumar Ganesan and colleagues from University of Melbourne think they may have found the perfect material from which to build bionic eyes—diamond. They are using the ultra-strong, biocompatible material to build the electrodes needed to pass light signals to the optic nerve. And they are already testing their devices. In fact, diamond seems so well…

A research team in New Zealand hopes to understand the physical changes that underpin the abrupt switches in brain activity between being healthy and awake, sleeping, or having a seizure. Marcus Wilson, a biophysicist from University of Waikato, reported on the team’s efforts to understand such brain states as natural sleep, unconsciousness and seizures by…

The world’s first high resolution, 3D pictures of the flexibility of living tissues could lead to significant advances in disease detection, according to Brendan Kennedy and colleagues from the University of Western Australia. Diseased tissues such as tumours give themselves away because they tend to be stiffer than surrounding healthy cells. Doctors can try to…

Implanted medical devices may no longer need batteries, says Ajay Tikka from Victoria University in Melbourne. Instead, he and his colleagues have developed technology that can wirelessly beam power to a device implanted under the skin. Using that power to open tiny valves remotely in implanted drug delivery technology is one potential application, according to…

The next generation of flexible displays and electronic paper could build themselves, thanks to the discovery of a way of getting the materials comprising them to self-assemble. A compound known to switch from transparent to opaque when triggered by an electric current can be programmed to assemble itself, says Scott Jones from the University of…

A sprinkle of diamond dust could help doctors to diagnose disease better. Ewa Rej and David Reilly from the University of Sydney are testing nanoparticles of the precious gem for their potential to improve MRI scans. They are examining the possibility that giving patients tiny amounts of nano-diamond will boost the contrast of images, making…

US researchers reported on their ability to create diamond nanowires  which could one day be used to power quantum computers with many times the processing power of today’s supercomputers. These diamond nanowires can provide the steady stream of photons needed for light-based quantum computers, says Tom Babinec from the Marko Lončar’s Laboratory for Nanoscale Optics…