Devising the best treatment for a patient with cancer requires doctors to know something about the traits of the cancer from which the patient is suffering. But one of the greatest difficulties in treating cancer is that cancer cells are not all the same. Even within the same tumor, cancer cells can differ in their…
Light Allows Objects to Levitate
Researchers at Caltech have designed a way to levitate and propel objects using only light, by creating specific nanoscale patterning on the objects’ surfaces. Though still theoretical, the work is a step toward developing a spacecraft that could reach the nearest planet outside of our solar system in 20 years, powered and accelerated only by…
The Microscopic Origin of Efficiency Droop in LEDs
Semiconductor study shows that the coupling between electrons and thermal vibrations may be sapping energy from LEDs Light-emitting diodes—or LEDs, as they are commonly known—have been slowly replacing incandescent light bulbs in applications ranging from car taillights to indicators on electronics since their invention in the 1960s. Eschewing the filament of an incandescent bulb and…
Tools and Techniques to Track and Study Methane
Methane is less prevalent in the atmosphere than fellow greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2), but it presents more difficult challenges for researchers attempting to study it. Most producers of CO2 can easily estimate their carbon footprint—eliminating the need for close tracking. For example, power plants burning fossil fuels know, to a high degree of accuracy, how…