Journal Club

Highlighting recently published papers selected by Academy members

Category Archives: Physics

Journal Club: The simple physics of stretching rubber bands surprises researchers, offers up potential application

Posted on January 18, 2019 by Marcus Woo

Movie 2 – Classic strech dominated recoil When the researchers turned their high-speed camera on a rubber band being released, they discovered, to their surprise, that the shape of the back of the rubber band was round (top clip), and … Continue reading →

Journal Club: Simple model reproduces patterns of toxic protein buildup across multiple neurodegenerative diseases

Posted on October 26, 2018 by Jessica P. Johnson

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: Researchers may’ve finally solved mystery of crater ray formation

Posted on July 13, 2018 by Adam Mann

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 →

Journal Club: Cells use waves to regulate mitosis, suggesting similar wave dynamics as myriad natural phenomena

Posted on December 18, 2017 by Carrie Arnold

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 →

Journal Club: A physicist’s take on the age-old ecological puzzle of how species form communities

Posted on May 19, 2017 by Carolyn Beans

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 →

Journal Club: Why does water form on icy surfaces? New model solves century-old mystery

Posted on December 13, 2016 by Mark Zastrow

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 | Leave a comment

Journal Club: Finding new ways to store higher-density information with ferroelectric materials

Posted on September 7, 2016 by Stephen Ornes

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 | Leave a comment

Journal Club: Friction of the vacuum could slow the rotation of pulsars

Posted on August 1, 2016 by Charles Choi

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 →

Categories: Journal Club | Physics | Tagged pulsar, quantum vacuum, vacuum friction | Leave a comment

Journal Club: New ability to measure the recoil from single photons could help address fundamental physics mysteries

Posted on July 22, 2016 by Charles Choi

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 | Leave a comment

Journal Club: Synchronizing clocks to record precision

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Charles Choi

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 | Leave a comment