Fatal neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) begin as tiny pockets of misfolded proteins that evade the body’s normal detritus-removal systems. They spread throughout the brain and clog neural pathways. But exactly how these proteins propagate … Continue reading
Journal Club
Highlighting recently published papers selected by Academy members
Category Archives: Physics
Journal Club: Researchers may’ve finally solved mystery of crater ray formation
Look carefully at the full moon and you’ll see bright skinny streaks extending from large lunar craters. These are ejecta rays, spoke-like lines that seem to shoot from the circular impact site, a vivid testament to ancient explosions. But scientists … Continue reading
Categories: Astronomy | Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences | Journal Club | Physics | Uncategorized
Tagged asteroid, crater, crater rays, ejecta rays, impactor, moon
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Journal Club: Cells use waves to regulate mitosis, suggesting similar wave dynamics as myriad natural phenomena
Over the past decade, biologists have discovered an ever-increasing number of phenomena that exhibit wave-like behavior. Everything from the firing of neurons to the spread of a virus through a population can show a similar pattern: they emanate from … Continue reading
Categories: Cell Biology | Developmental Biology | Journal Club | Physics
Tagged actin, diffusion, endocytosis, mitosis, plasma membrane, wave
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Journal Club: A physicist’s take on the age-old ecological puzzle of how species form communities
Ecologists have long searched for the rules that govern how individual species join together to form a community. Whether forest or desert, the problem is complex. Myriad factors influence a community’s composition and stability —from how strongly species compete to … Continue reading
Categories: Animal Behavior | Applied Physical Sciences | Ecology | Journal Club | Mathematics | Physics
Tagged ecological community, ecosystem, Lotka-Volterra equation, species interactions
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Journal Club: Why does water form on icy surfaces? New model solves century-old mystery
Even in freezing temperatures, an ice cube can form a nanometers-thick sheen of water on its surface. This peculiar behavior, often called surface melting or pre-melting, was first proposed by Michael Faraday in 1846 as an ever-present precursor to actual … Continue reading
Categories: Journal Club | Physics
Tagged dewetting, ice, quasi-liquid layer, sublimation, wetting
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Journal Club: Finding new ways to store higher-density information with ferroelectric materials
Recent findings suggest early proof of principle for a new way to read, write and erase information in much smaller areas than conventional memory. The method entails ferroelectric thin films, which store information using the domains’ polarization directions like the … Continue reading
Categories: Applied Physical Sciences | Journal Club | Physics
Tagged domains, ferroelectric, memory, tem
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Journal Club: Friction of the vacuum could slow the rotation of pulsars
A vacuum is by definition a space entirely devoid of matter, so one might naturally assume that objects in a vacuum do not encounter friction. However, quantum physics implies that the vacuum is not actually completely empty, but is rather … Continue reading
Journal Club: New ability to measure the recoil from single photons could help address fundamental physics mysteries
Scientists have for the first time directly measured the recoil that single photons exert on levitating nanoparticles in a vacuum. The work that could help lead to more sensitive measurements of ultra-weak forces, according to research detailed online June 13 … Continue reading
Categories: Journal Club | Physics
Tagged laser cooling, nanoparticles, optical tweezers, photons, ultraweak forces
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Journal Club: Synchronizing clocks to record precision
Precisely synchronized networks of clocks are key not only to modern everyday services such as GPS networks, but also to scientific endeavors such as giant telescope networks and tests of gravitation. Scientists now have devised a way to use laser … Continue reading
Categories: Journal Club | Physics
Tagged clocks, lasers, NIST, relativity, synchronization
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First Look: Finding dark matter with gamma rays
Dark matter remains one of the greatest mysteries in the universe, an invisible substance thought to make up five-sixths of all matter in the universe. Research teams around the world are striving to discover what exactly dark matter is by … Continue reading
Categories: Physics
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