Browse the Science Columns:
2011 Archives | 2010 Archives |
2009 Archives | 2008 Archives | 2007 Archives | 2006 Archives
December
December 18,
2008
R-Axion—A Flash from the World Beyond Supersymmetry
One of the main goals of the upcoming experiments at the Large Hadron Collider is the discovery of a new class of subatomic particles, supersymmetric particles.
December 11,
2008
Antimatter: What is It and Where Did It Go?
Lessons from the SLAC B Factory and This Year's Nobel Prize
SLAC physicist Aaron Roodman kindly agreed to provide this summary of his October 28 public lecture.
December 4,
2008
Free Electron Laser Basics: An LCLS Primer
In a few short months, the Linac Coherent Light Source will start operation as the world's first hard X-ray
free electron laser, pushing SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to the frontier of photon science.
November
November 20,
2008
Biology—Now in 3-D!
Consider the structure of a protein, solved by users at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation
Lightsource. Some proteins have deep crevices or appendages that pivot and rotate. But scientific papers by necessity present these dynamic three-dimensional structures with flat and static two-dimensional pictures. Biologists can now share
3-D images of their proteins with simple Portable Document Format files.
November 13,
2008
Mutation's Mechanism for Harm Revealed
Scientists are one step closer to understanding a piece of the machinery involved in DNA transcription and repair, thanks to work done in part at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource macromolecular crystallography Beamline 11-1.
November 6,
2008
Watching Electrons with Lasers
A team of researchers from the Stanford PULSE Institute for Ultrafast Energy Science at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has recently moved a step closer to visualizing the motions of electrons in molecules using a technique called high harmonic generation, or HHG.
October
October 30,
2008
Strong Dynamics Saves the WIMP
A new addition to theoretical models for the mass and behavior of this particle provides
a compelling candidate for the dark matter while staying consistent with
current observations.
October 9,
2008
Helping Red Blood Cells Get Their Iron
Working in part at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory's Beamline 9-2, a team of researchers led by Martin Lawrence from Montana State University has solved the structure of a protein critical to importing iron into cells.
October 2,
2008
A New Type of Superconductor
The recent discovery of superconductivity in iron-based layered compounds known as iron oxypnictides
has renewed interest in high-temperature superconductivity.
September
September 25,
2008
Small, Fast and Holographic
Scientists at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory have demonstrated a new X-ray holographic technique for imaging wide areas of a nanoscale
sample without losing resolution.
September 18,
2008
Looking for the Higgs Boson at Hadron Colliders
The existence of the Higgs boson was predicted more than 40 years ago to solve puzzles associated with the weak interactions, very short-range forces in the Standard Model of particle physics.
September 11,
2008
Targeting the LCLS Bull's-eye
One of the most exciting potential applications of the Linac Coherent Light Source is the ability to collect single pulse images of biological and inorganic materials that do not contain periodic structure, a requirement of the preceding technique, X-ray crystallography.
September 4,
2008
Lensless Nanoscale Imaging
A team of researchers working at the Stanford Synchrotron Research Laboratory Beamline 13-3 have devised an imaging technique that combines methods from traditional X-ray crystallography and X-ray holography, circumventing one of the major technical hurdles associated with capturing detailed images of non-crystal, or "nonperiodic" materials.
August
August 28,
2008
Dark Matter Illuminated
A new study of an immense cosmic collision has provided confirming evidence for dark matter.
August 14,
2008
New Mechanism for Charge Density Wave Formations
Using beamline 5-4 at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, researchers from SSRL and Fudan University in Shanghai have worked out the mechanism behind the formation of charge density waves in 2H-structured transition metal dichalcogenides, or 2H-TMDs.
August 7,
2008
Pulling QCD Predictions Out of a (Black) Hat
The Large Hadron Collider will start taking data at the end of this year, opening the door to particle collisions at energies in the trillions of electron volts (tera-electron volts, or TeV). Exploring the behavior of elementary particles at these energies, LHC researchers expect to uncover the secret of how particles get their masses. Many theoretical models have been proposed and are waiting to be tested.
July
July 31,
2008
Prelude to the Higgs: Fermilab Observes Rare ZZ Diboson Production
Scientists of the DZero collaboration at the US Department of Energy’s Fermilab have announced the observation of pairs of Z bosons, force-carrying particles produced in proton-antiproton collisions at the Tevatron particle collider.
July 24,
2008
A Droll Stroll Through the Periodic Table
Chemists at the University of Nottingham have made a series of short videos, one for each element of the Periodic Table, and they are a hoot.
July 3,
2008
Electronics go Organic
Using SSRL beamlines 11-3 and 10-1, a team of researchers including Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory scientists and Stanford University researchers, have determined the precise arrangement of molecules within a thin film sample of an organic semiconductor, a step that could soon help scientists better design these materials.
June
June 19,
2008
A New Eye on Sulfur in Living Tissues
Sulfur is essential for life, playing important roles in metabolism and protein structure and function.
May
May 29,
2008
Holographic Electron Systems
Gravity describes the motion of the planets and other celestial objects in addition to the evolution of the Universe itself. Because of its weakness, however, it can often be ignored in problems where one of the other three forces is involved.
May 15,
2008
Last Call for Accelerator School Applications
The deadline to apply for the Third International Accelerator School for Linear Colliders is today.
May 1,
2008
Very Small Spot Size Achieved at the New Beamline 13-2
Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) staff have been making progress on the soft X-ray emission spectroscopy capability at the new Beamline 13-2.
April
April 17,
2008
How to Build a Future Gamma-ray Detector?
Following its launch next month, the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) will explore the non-thermal universe using gamma-rays, the most energetic form of light—more than a million times more energetic than "medical" X-rays (energies range from 20 MeV to 300 GeV). However, at even higher energies (starting at 1 TeV), gamma rays are usually so sparse that larger detection areas are needed.
April 3,
2008
Controlling the Wave
Stanford University researchers working in part at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory have discovered a novel set of properties pertaining to a compound of materials called tritellurides.
March
March 20,
2008
Catch Me if You Can: Searching for Gluinos at the Tevatron
One of the most fascinating proposals for new laws of physics that we might discover at higher energies is supersymmetry, the idea that every particle in nature has a partner with the opposite statistics.
March 6,
2008
Scientists Decipher Mechanism behind Antimicrobial "Hole Punchers"
The rapid development of bacterial resistance to conventional antibiotics (such as penicillin or vancomycin) has become a major public health concern.
February
February 21,
2008
Tuning the Properties of Iron-Sulfur Clusters in Proteins
Proteins containing iron-sulfur clusters are ubiquitous in nature and catalyze one-electron transfer processes. These proteins have evolved into two classes that have large differences in their electrochemical potentials: high potential iron-sulfur proteins (HiPIPs) and bacterial ferredoxins (Fds).
February 14,
2008
A New Window on
Well-Known Proteins
Researchers from the Hauptman Woodward Medical Research Institute, working in part at The Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory's Beamline 11-1, have used x-ray diffraction data to confirm a family linkage between the mammalian protein GRP94 and the better known HSP90 proteins, whose functions range from signal transduction to immune response.
February 7,
2008
Quirky New Physics Signals at the LHC
The CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is turning on this year and the high energy physics community is holding its breath. This new particle accelerator, 27 kilometers in circumference, promises to unveil the secrets of the electroweak scale.
January
January 31,
2008
Another Step Toward Understanding Autism
The establishment of neural connections is critical for proper brain function, and errors in the process are thought to be associated with autism and other disorders.
January 24,
2008
Cosmological Results from Observations of Galaxy Clusters
In addition to the well-understood radiation and baryonic matter, our universe contains weakly interacting dark matter and dark energy.
January 17,
2008
From Chemical and Engineering News: Novel Embrace Of Protein And Metal
A copper-trafficking protein has been found to have a unique type of metal-binding mechanism that may ease copper release.
January 10,
2008
The Structure of a Coated Gold Nanoparticle
A team of scientists, working in part at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory's crystallography beam lines and led by Stanford Professor Roger Kornberg, has determined for the first time the atomic structure (at 1.1 Å resolution) of a thiol-covered gold nanoparticle, a discovery with potential for a range of applications from biosensors to nanotransistors.
January 4,
2008
Twist and Shout!
To understand physics at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), we will need to work much harder to compute cross sections for quark and gluon scattering.
|
