ScienceDaily: Matter & Energy News

The future of electronics, now in 2-D Posted: 14 Feb 2015 03:45 PM PST The future of electronics could lie in a material from its past, as researchers work to turn germanium -- the material of 1940s transistors -- into a potential replacement for silicon.

World’s first compact rotary 3-D printer-cum-scanner Posted: 14 Feb 2015 03:42 PM PST The the world’s first compact 3-D printer that can also scan items into digitized models. will be delivered to the United States in March. This user-friendly device allows users without much knowledge of 3-D software to scan any item, then edit the digitized model on the computer and print it out in 3-D.

What’s new for LHC Run II Posted: 14 Feb 2015 06:23 AM PST The most powerful particle accelerator on Earth soon will reawaken for its second run. Scientists explain how the upgraded capabilities of the Large Hadron Collider and its experiments will give access to a previously inaccessible realm of physics.

How iron feels the heat Posted: 13 Feb 2015 11:50 AM PST Researchers have known that the arrangement of the atoms in a piece of iron changes several times before melting -- but the details of just how and why this property contributes to the metal's thermodynamic stability remained a mystery. Recent work provides evidence for how iron's magnetism plays a role in this curious property -- an understanding that could help researchers develop better and stronger steel.

Buildings with 'rocking' technology would be more earthquake-resilient Posted: 11 Feb 2015 09:37 AM PST Buildings that rock during an earthquake and return to plumb would withstand seismic shaking better than structural designs commonly used in vulnerable zones of California and elsewhere. A researcher's modeling suggests optimal sizes for damping devices and steel yielding devices that dissipate the energy of a quake.

Wanted: The faces of the chemical crowd Posted: 11 Feb 2015 09:36 AM PST Elements and their compounds will no longer be able to hide in mixtures, even if the latter are made up of many components. The end of chemical incognito is a result of the development at Warsaw's Polish Academy of Science's Institute of Physical Chemistry of a new, much more accurate method of identifying the 'fingerprints' of chemical substances, imprinted in the light dispersed by the mixtures.